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RECOLLECTIONS 



OF THE 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 



RECOLLECTIONS 



OF THE 



LAST DAYS OF 



SHELLEY AND BYRON. 



V 




BY 



WJ? TRELAWNY. 



" No living poet ever arrived at the fiilness of his fame; the jury which 
sits in judgment upon a poet, helonging as he does to all time, must be com- 
posed of his peers : it must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of the 
wise of many generations."' 

Shelley's Defence of .Poetry. 



BOSTON: 
TICK NOR AND FIELDS 

M DCCC Lvm. 






RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



» • • 

« • 

• 91 



J 



o 

N. 



^ PREFACE. 



Any details of the lives of men whose opin- 
ions have had a marked influence upon man- 
kind, or from whose works we have derived 
pleasure or profit, cannot but be interesting. 
This conviction induces me to record some 
facts regarding Shelley and Byron, two of the 
last of the true Poets. The matter contained 
in this small Volume concerning them is de- 
rived partly from notes taken and letters written 
at the time the events occurred, and partly from 
memory. I wrote what is now printed, not sys- 
tematically, but just as the incidents occurred 
to me, thinking that with the rough draft before 
me it would be an easy, if not an agreeable, 
task to re-write the whole in a connected form ; 



vi PREFACE. 

but my plan is marred by my idleness or want 
of literary dexterity. I therefore commit the 
rough draft to the printer as first written, in 
" most admired disorder." 

Febimary, 1858. 



I 



^^^WW^W 



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RECOLLECTIONS 



OF THK 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON, 



CHAPTER i. 



Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood 
Above the blind and battling multitude: 
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave 
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty. 

Sonnet to TForfZs?t"ort/i.— Shelley. 



In the summer of 1819 I was at Ouchy, a 
village on the margin of the lake of Geneva, 
in the Canton de Vaux. The most intelligent 
person I could find in the neighbourhood to 
talk to, was a young bookseller at Lausanne, 
educated at a German University ; he was 
familiar with the works of many most distin- 
guished writers ; his reading was not confined, 
as it generally is with men of his craft, to 
catalogues and indexes, for he was an earn- 



8 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

est student, and loved literature more than 
lucre. 

As Lausanne is one of the inland harbours of 
refuge in which wanderers from all countries 
seek shelter, his shelves contained works in all 
languages ; he was a good linguist, and read 
the most attractive of them. " The elevation 
of minds," he said, " was more important than 
the height of mountains (I was looking at a 
scale of the latter), and books are the standards 
to measure them by." He used to translate for 
me passages from the works of Schiller, Kant, 
Goethe, and others, and write comments on 
their paradoxical, mystical, and metaphysical 
theories. One morning I saw my friend sit- 
ting under the acacias on the terrace in fi*ont 
of the house in which Gibbon had lived, and 
where he \, rote the ' Decline and Fall.' He 
said, " I am trying to sharpen my wits in this 
pungent air which gave such a keen edge to 
the great historian, so that I may fathom this 
book. Your modern poets, Byron, Scott, and 
Moore, I can read and understand as I walk 
along, but I have got hold of a book by one 
now that makes me stop to take breath and 
think." It wa&; Shelley's ' Queen Mab.' As 

\ 



LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 9 

I had never heard that name or title, I asked 
how he got the volume. " With a lot of new 
books in English, which I took in exchange 
for old French ones. Not knowing the names 
of the authors, I might not have looked into 
them, had not a pampered, prying priest smelt 
this one in my lumber-room, and, after a brief 
glance at the notes, exploded in wrath, shout- 
ing out * Infidel, jacobin leveller : nothing can 
stop this spread of blasphemy but the stake 
and the fagot; the world is retrograding into 
accursed heathenism and universal anarchy ! ' 
When the priest had departed, I took up 
the small book he had thrown down, saying, 
' Surely there must be something here worth 
tasting.' You know the proverb ' No person 
throws a stone at a tree that does not bear 
fruit.' " 

" Priests do not," I answered ; " so I, too, 
must have a bite of the forbidden fruit. What 
do you think of it ? " 

" To my taste," said the bookseller, " the 
fruit is crude, but well flavoured ; it requires 
a strong stomach to digest it ; the. writer is 
an enthusiast, and has the true spirit of a 
poet ; he aims at regenerating, not like Byron 



10 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

and Moore, levelling mankind. They say he is 
but a boy, and this his first offering: if that 
be true, we shall hear of him again." 

Some days after this conversation I walked 
to Lausanne, to breakfast at the hotel with 
an old friend. Captain Daniel Roberts, of the 
Navy. He was out, sketching, but presently 
came in accompanied by two English ladies, 
with whom he had made acquaintance whilst 
drawing, and whom he brought to our hotel. 
The husband of one of them soon followed. 
I saw by their utilitarian garb, as well as by 
the blisters and blotches on their cheeks, lips, 
and noses, that they were pedestrian tourists, 
fresh from the snow-covered mountains, the 
blaziitg sun and frosty air having acted on 
their unseasoned skins, as boiling water does 
on the- lobster, by dyeing his dark coat scarlet. 
The man was evidently a denizen of the north, 
his accent harsh, skin white, of an angular and 
bony build, and self-confident and dogmatic in 
his opinions. The precision and quaintness of 
his language, as well as his eccentric remarks 
on common things, stimulated my mind. Our 
icy islanders thaw rapidly when they have drift- 
ed into warmer latitudes : broken loose from 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYROi!^. 11 

its anti-social system, mystic casts, coteries, 
sets, and sects, they lay aside their purse-proud 
tuft-hunting, and toadying ways, and are very 
apt to run riot in the enjoyment of all their 
senses. Besides, we are compelled to talk in 
strange company, if not from good breeding, 
to prove our breed, as the gift of speech is 
often our principal if not sole distinction from 
the rest of the brute animals. 

To return to our breakfast. The travellers, 
flushed with health, delighted with their excur- 
sion, and with appetites earned by bodily and 
mental activity, were in such high spirits, that 
Koberts and I caught the infection of their 
mirth; we talked as loud and fast as if under 
the exhilarating influence of champagne, instead 
of such a sedative compound as cafe au lait. 
I can rescue nothing out of oblivion but a few 
last words. The stranger expressed his disgust 
at the introduction of carriages into the moun- 
tain districts of Switzerland, and at the old 
fogies who used them. 

" As to the arbitrary, pitiless. Godless wretch- 
es," he exclaimed, " who have removed na- 
ture's landmarks by cutting roads through Alps 
and Apennines, until all things are reduced to 



12 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

the same dead level, they will be arraigned 
hereafter with the unjust ; they have robbed the 
best specimens of what men should be, of their 
freeholds in the mountains ; the eagle, the black 
cock, and the red deer, they have tamed or ex- 
terminated. The lover of nature can nowhere 
find a solitary nook to contemplate her beau- 
ties. Yesterday," he continued, " at the break 
of day, I scaled the most rugged height within 
my reach ; it looked inaccessible ; this pleasant 
delusion was quickly dispelled; I was rudely 
startled out of a deep reverie by the accursed 
jarring, jingling, and rumbling of a caleche, and 
harsh voices that drowned the torrent's fall." 

The stranger, now hearing a commotion in 
the street, sprang on his feet, looked out of the 
window, and rang the bell violently. ^ 

" Waiter," he said, " is that our carriage ? 
Why did you not tell us ? Come, lasses, be 
stirring, the freshness of the day is gone. You 
may rejoice in not having to walk ; there is a 
chance of saving the remnants of skin the sun 
has left on our chins and noses. — to-day we 
shall be stewed instead of barbecued." 

On their leaving the room to get ready for 
their journey, my friend Roberts told me the 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 13 

strangers were the poet "Wordsworth, his wife 
and sister. 

Who could have divined this ? I could see 
no trace, in the hard features and weather- 
stained brow of the outer-man, of the divinity 
within him. In a few minutes the travellers 
reappeared ; we cordially shook hands, and 
agreed to meet again at Geneva. Now that I 
knew that I was talking to one of the veterans 
of the gentle craft, as there was no time to 
waste in idle ceremony, I asked him abruptly 
what he thought of Shelley as a poet ? 

" Nothing," he replied, as abruptly. 

Seeing my surprise, he added, " A poet who 
has not produced a good poem before he is 
twenty-five, we may conclude cannot, and never 
will do so." 

" The Cenci ! " I said eagerly. 

" Won't do," he replied, shaking his head, as 
he got into the carriage ; a rough-coated Scotch 
terrier followed him. 

*' This hairy fellow is our flea-trap," he 
shouted out, as they started off. 

When I recovered from the shock of having 
heard the harsh sentence passed by an elder 
bard on a younger brother of the Muses, I ex- 
claimed, 



14 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

After all, poets are but earth. It is the old 
story, — Envy — Cain and Abel. Professions, 
sects, and communities in general, right or 
wrong, hold together, men of the pen excepted ; 
if one of their guild is worsted in the battle, 
they do as the rooks do by their inky brothers, 
fly from him, cawing and screaming ; if they 
don't fire the shot, they sound the bugle to 
charge. 

I did not then know that the full-fledged 
author never reads the writings of his contem- 
poraries, except to cut them up in a review, — 
that being a work of love. In after-years, 
Shelley being dead, Wordsworth confessed this 
fact ; he was then induced to read some of 
Shelley's poems, and admitted that Shelley was 
the greatest master of harmonious verse in our 
modern literature. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 15 



CHAPTER 11. 

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake 
With the wide world I dwelt in, is a thing 
Which warns me with its stillness to forsake 
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. 

Childe Harold. 

Shortly after I went to Geneva. In the 
largest country-house (Plangeau) near- that city 
lived a friend of mine, a Cornish baronet, a good 
specimen of the old school; v^ell read, and pol- 
ished by long intercourse with intelligent men of 
many nations. He retained a custom of the old 
barons, now obsolete, — his dining-hall was open 
to all his friends ; you were welcomed at his table 
as often as it suited you to go there, without the 
ceremony of inconvenient invitations. 

At this truly hospitable house, I first saw three 
young men, recently returned from India. They 
lived together at a pretty villa (Maison aux Gre- 
nades^ signifying the House of Pomegranates), 
situated on the shores of the lake, and at an 
easy walk from the city of Geneva and the 



16 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

baronet's. Their names were George Jervoice, 
of the Madras Artillery; E. E. Williams, and 
Thomas Medwin, the two last, lieutenants on 
half-pay, late of the 8th Dragoons. Medwin 
was the chief medium that impressed us with a 
desire to know Shelley ; he had known him from 
childhood ; he talked of nothing but the inspired 
boy, his virtues and his sufferings, so that, irre- 
spective of his genius, we all longed to know 
him. From all I could gather from him, Shelley 
lived as he wrote, the life of a true poet, loving 
solitude, but by no means a cynic. In the two 
or three months I was at Geneva, I passed many 
agreeable days at the two villas I have men- 
tioned. Late in the autumn I was unexpectedly 
called to England ; Jervoice and Medwin went 
to Italy ; the Williams's determined on passing 
the winter at Chalons sur Saone. I offered to 
drive them there, in a light Swiss carriage of 
my own ; and in the spring to rejoin them, and 
to go on to Italy together in pursuit of Shelley. 
Human animals can only endure a limited 
amount of pain or pleasure, excess of either is 
followed by insensibility. The Williams's, sa- 
tiated with felicity at their charming villa on the 
cheerful lake of Geneva, resolved to leave it, and 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 17 

see how long they could exist deprived of every- 
thing they had been accustomed to. "With such 
an object, a French provincial town was just 
the place to try the experiment. Chalons sur 
Saone was decided on. We commenced our 
journey in November, in an open carriage. After 
four days' drive through wind, rain, and mud, 
we arrived at Chalons in a sorry plight. The 
immense plain which surrounded the town was 
flooded ; we took up our quarters at an hotel on 
the slimy banks of the Saone. What a contrast 
to the villa of pomegranates we had left, we all 
thought — but said nothing. 

When I left them by the malle poste^ on my 
way to Paris, I felt as a man should feel when, 
stranded on a barren rock, he seizes the only 
boat and pushes off to the nearest land, leaving 
his forlorn comrades to perish miserably. After 
a course of spare diet of soupe maigre, bouilli, 
sour wine, and solitary confinement had restored 
their senses, they departed in the spring for the 
south, and never looked behind them until they 
had crossed the Alps. They went direct to the 
Shelleys ; and amongst Williams's letters I find 
his first impressions of the poet, which I here 
transcribe : — 



18 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

Pisa, April, 1821. 

My dear Trelawny, 

We purpose wintering in Florence, and shel- 
tering ourselves from the summer heat at a castle 
of a place, called Villa Poschi, at Pugnano, two 
leagues from hence, where, with Shelley for a 
companion, I promise myself a great deal of 
pleasure, sauntering in the shady retreats of the 
olive and chestnut woods that grow above our 
heads up the hill sides. He has a small boat 
building, only ten or twelve feet long, to go ad- 
venturing, as he calls it, up the many little rivers 
and canals that intersect this part of Italy ; some 
of which pass through the most beautiful scenery 
imaginable, winding among the terraced gardens 
at the base of the neighbouring mountains, and 
opening into such lakes as Beintina, &c. 

Shelley is certainly a man of most astonish- 
ing genius in appearance, extraordinarily young, 
of manners mild and amiable, but withal full of 
life and fun. His wonderful command of lan- 
guage, and the ease with which he speaks on 
what are generally considered abstruse subjects, 
are striking ; in short, his ordinary conversation 
is akin to poetry, for he sees things in the most 
singular and pleasing lights : if he wrote as he 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYKON. 19 

talked, he would be popular enough. Lord 
Byron and others think him by far the most 
imaginative poet of the day. The style of his 
lordship's letters to him is quite that of a pupil, 
such as asking his opinion, and demanding his 
advice on certain points, &c. I must tell you, 
that the idea of the tragedy of Manfred, and 
many of the philosophical, or rather metaphy- 
sical, notions interwoven in the composition of 
the fourth Canto of Childe Harold, are of his 
suggestion ; but this, of course, is between our- 
selves. A few nights ago I nearly put an end 
to the Poet and myself. We went to Leghorn, 
to see after the little boat, and, as the wind blew 
excessively hard, and fair, we resolved upon re- 
turning to Pisa in her, and accordingly started 
with a huge sail, and at 10 o'clock, p. m. capsized 
her. 

I commenced this letter yesterday morning, 
but was prevented from continuing it by the 
very person of whom I am speaking, who, hav- 
ing heard me complain of a pain in my chesfc 
since the time of our ducking, brought with him 
a doctor, and I am now writing to you in bed, 
with a blister on the part supposed to be af- 
fected. I am ordered to lie still and try to sleep. 



20 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

but I prefer sitting up and bringing this sheet 
to a conclusion. A General R., an Englishman, 
has been poisoned by his daughter and her par- 
amour, a Venetian servant, by small doses of 
arsenic, so that the days of the Cenci are re- 
vived, with this difference, that crimes seem to 
strengthen with keeping. Poor Beatrice was 
driven to parricide by long and unendurable 
outrages : in this last case, the parent was sacri- 
ficed by the lowest of human passions, the basis 
of many crimes. By the by, talking of Beatrice 
and the Cenci, I have a horrid history to tell 
you of that unhappy girl, that it is impossible 
to put on paper: you will not wonder at the 
act, but admire the virtue (an odd expression, 
you will perhaps think) that inspired the blow. 
Adieu. .Tane desires to be very kindly remem- 
bered, and believe me. 

Very sincerely yours, 

E. E. Williams. 

In a subsequent letter he gave me a fore- 
taste of what I might expect to find in Lord 
Byron. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 21 

Pisa, December, 1821. 

My dear Trelawny, 
Why, how is this ? I will swear that yester- 
day was Christmas Day, for I celebrated it at a 
splendid feast given by Lord Byron to what I 
call his Pistol Club — i. e. to Shelley, Medwin, a 
Mro TaafFe, and myself, and was scarcely awake 
from the vision of it when your letter was put 
into my hands, dated 1st of January, 1822. 
Time flies fast enough, but you, in the rapidity 
of your motions, contrive to outwing the old 
fellow; rather take a plume or two from your 
mental pinions, and add them, like Mercury to 
your heels, and let us see you before another 
year draws upon us. Forty years hence, my 
lad, you will treat the present with more respect 
than to ante-didiie the coming one. But I hope 
that time with you will always fly as unheeded 
as it now appears to do. Lord Byron is the 
very spirit of this place, — that is, to those few to 
whom, like Mokannah, he has lifted his veil. 
tiWhen you asked me, in your last letter, if it 
^ was probable to become at all intimate with 
* * him, I replied in a manner which I considered 
it most prudent to do, from motives which are 
best explained when I see you. Now, however, 



22 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

I know him a great deal better, and think I may 
safely say that that point will rest entirely 
with yom'self. The eccentricities of an assumed 
character, which a total retirement from the 
world almost rendered a natural one, are daily 
wearing off. He sees none of the numerous 
English who are here, excepting those I have 
named. And of this, I am selfishly glad, for 
one sees nothing of a man in mixed societies. 
It is difficult to move him, he says, when he is 
once fixed, .but he seems bent upon joining our 
party at Spezzia next summer. 

I shall reserve all that I have to say about the 
boat until we meet at the select committee, 
which is intended to be held on that subject 
when you arrive here. Have a boat we must, 
and if we can get Roberts to build her, so much 
the^better. We are settled here for the winter, 
perhaps many w^inters, for we have taken apart- 
ments and furnished them. This is a step that 
anchors a man at once, nay, moors him head 
and stern : you will find us at the Tre Palazzi, 
349, Lung 'Arno. Pray, remember me to Rob- 
erts ; tell him he must be content to take me 
by the hand, though he should not discover a 
pipe in my mouth, or mustachios on it, — the 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 23 

first makes me sick, and the last makes Jane 
so. 

Bring with you any new books you may have. 
There is a Mrs. B. here, with a litter of seven 
daughters ; she is the gayest lady, and the only 
one who gives dances, for the young squaws are 
arriving at that age, when, as Lord Byron says, / 
they must waltz for their livelihood. When a 
man gets on this strain, the sooner he concludes 
his letter the better. Addio. Believe me. 
Very truly yours, 

E, E. Williams. 



/ 



24 RECOLLECTIONS OE THE 



CHAPTER III. 

gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, 
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men 
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart 
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den ? 
Defenceless as thou wert. 

Adonais. — Shelley. 

I WAS not accustomed to the town life I was 
then leading, and became as tired of society as 
townfolks are of solitude. The great evil in 
solitude is, that your brain lies idle ; your 
muscles expand by exercise, and your wits con- 
tract from the want of it. 

To obviate this evil, and maintain the just 
equilibrium between the body and the brain, I 
determined to pass the coming winter in the 
wildest part of Italy, the Maremma, in the 
midst of the marshes and malaria, with my 
friends Roberts and Williams ; keen sportsmen 
both — that part of the country being well 
stocked with woodcocks and wild fowl. For 
this purpose, I shipped an ample supply of dogs, 



LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 25 

guns, and other implements of the chase to 
Leghorn. For the exercise of my brain, I pro- 
posed passing my summer with Shelley and 
Byron, boating in the Mediterranean. After 
completing my arrangements, I started in the 
autumn by the French malle-poste, from Paris 
to Chalons, regained possession of the horse 
and cabriolet I had left with Williams, and 
drove myself to Geneva, where Roberts was 
waiting for me. After a short delay, I con- 
tinued my journey south with Roberts in my 
Swiss carriage, so that we could go on or stop, 
where and when we pleased. By our method 
of travelling, we could sketch, shoot, fish, and 
observe everything at our leisure. If our pro- 
gress was slow, it was most pleasant. We 
crossed Mount Cenis, and in due course arrived 
at Genoa. After a long stop at that city of 
painted palaces, anxious to see the Poet, I 
drove to Pisa alone. I arrived late, and after 
putting up my horse at the inn and dining, 
hastened to the Tre Palazzi, on the Lung 
'Arno, where the Shelleys and Williams's lived 
on different flats under the same roof, as is the 
custom on the Continent. The Williams's re- 
ceived me in their earnest cordial manner ;^ 



26 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

we had a great deal to communicate to each 
other, and were in loud and animated conver- 
sation, when I was rather put out by observing 
in the passage near the open door, opposite to 
where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily 
fixed on mine ; it was too dark to make out 
whom they belonged to. With the acuteness 
of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the 
direction of mine, and going to the doorway, 
she laughingly said, 

*' Come in, Shelley, it's only our friend Tre 
just arrived." 

Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall 
thin stripling held out both his hands ; and al- 
though I could hardly believe as I looked at his 
flushed, feminine, and artless face that it could 
be the Poet, I returned his warm pressure. 
After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he 
sat down and listened. I was silent from as- 
tonishment : was it possible this mild-looking, 
beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at 
war with all the world ? — excommunicated by 
the Fathers of the Church, deprived of his 
civil rights by the fiat of a grirn Lord Chan- 
cellor, discarded by every member of his family, 
and denounced by the rival sages of our litera- 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 27 

ture as the founder of a Satanic school? I 
could not believe it ; it must be a hoax. He 
was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and 
trowsers, which he seemed to have otitgrown, 
or his tailor, as is the custom, had most shame- 
fully stinted him in his " sizings." Mrs. Wil- 
liams saw my embarrassment, and to relieve 
me asked Shelley what book he had in his 
hand ? His face brightened, and he answered 
briskly. 

" Calderon's Magico Prodigioso, I am trans- 
lating some passages in it." 

" Oh, read it to us ! " 

Shoved off from the shore of common-place 
incidents that could not interest him, and fairly 
launched on a theme that did, he instantly 
became oblivious of everything but the book in 
his hand. The masterly manner in which he 
analyzed the genius of the author, his lucid 
interpretation of the story, and the ease with 
which he translated into our language the most 
subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanish 
poet, were marvellous, as was his command of 
the two languages. After this touch of his 
quality I no longer doubted his identity ; a dead 
silence ensued ; looking up, I asked, 



28 EECOLLECTIOXS OF THE 

" Where is he ? " 

Mrs. Williams said, " Who ? Shelley ? Oh, 
he comes and goes like a spirit, no one knows 
when or*where." 

Presently he reappeared with Mrs. Shelley. 
She brought us back from the ideal world Shel- 
ley had left us in, to the real one, welcomed me 
to Italy, and asked me the news of London and 
Paris, the new books, operas, and bonnets, mar- 
riages, murders, and other marvels. The Poet 
vanished, and tea appeared. Mary Woolston- 
craft (the authoress), the wife of William God- 
win, died in 1797, in giving birth to their only 
child, Mary, married to the poet Shelley ; so 
that at the time I am speaking of Mrs. Shelley 
was twenty-seven. Such a rare pedigree of 
genius was enough to interest me in her, irre- 
spective of her own merits as an authoress. 
The most striking feature in her face was her 
calm, gTey eyes ; she was rather under the 
English standard of woman's height, very fair 
and light-haired, witty, social, and animated in 
the society of friends, though mournful in soli- 
tude ; like Shelley, though in a minor degree, 
she had the power of expressing her thoughts 
in varied and appropriate words, derived from 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 29 

familiarity with the works of our vigorous old 
writers. Neither of them used obsolete or for- 
eign words. This command of our language 
struck me the more as contrasted with the 
scanty vocabulary used by ladies in society, in 
which a score of poor hackneyed phrases suffice 
to express all that is felt or considered proper to 
reveal. 



30 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER IV. 

This should have been a noble creature — he 
Hath all the energy which would have made 
A goodly frame of glorious elements 
Had they been wisely mingled. 

Manfred. 

At two o'clock on the following day, in com- 
pany with Shelley, I crossed the Ponte Vecchio, 
and went on the Lung 'Arno to the Palazzo 
Lanfranchi, the residence of Lord Byron. We 
entered a large marble hall, ascended a giant 
staircase, passed through an equally large room 
over the hall, and were shown- into a smaller 
apartment which had books and a billiard-table 
in it. A surly-looking bull-dog (Moretto) an- 
nounced us, by growling, and the Pilgrim in- 
stantly advanced from an inner chamber, and 
stood before us. His halting gait was apparent, 
but he moved with quickness; and although 
pale, he looked as fresh, vigorous, and animated 
as any man I ever saw. His pride, added to 
his having lived for many years alone, was the 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 31 

cause I suppose that he was embarrassed at 
first meeting with strangers ; this he tried to 
conceal by an affectation of ease. After the 
interchange of common-place question and an- 
swer, he regained his self-possession, and turn- 
ing to Shelley, said, 

" As you are addicted to poesy, go and read 
the versicles I was delivered of last night, or 
rather this morning — that is, if you can. I am 
posed. I am getting scurrilous. There, is a 
letter from Tom Moore; read, you are blar- 
neyed in it ironically." 

He then took a cue, and asked me to play 
billiards ; he- struck the balls and moved about 
the table briskly, but neither played the game 
nor cared a rush about it, and chatted after this 
idle fashion : — 

" The purser of the frigate I went to Con- 
stantinople in called an officer scurrilous for 
alluding to his wig. Now, the day before I 
mount a wig — and I shall soon want one — I'll 
ride about with it on the pummel of my saddle, 
or stick it on my cane. 

" In that same frigate, near the Dardanelles, 
we nearly ran down an American trader with 
his cargo of notions. Our captain, old Ba- 



32 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

thurst, hailed, and with the dignity of a Lord, 
asked him where he came from, and the name 
of his ship. The Yankee captain bellowed, — 

" ' You copper-bottomed sarpent, I guess 
you'll know when I've reported you to Con- 
gress.' " 

The surprise I expressed by my looks was 
not at what 'he said, but that he could register 
such trifles in his memory. Of course with 
other such small anecdotes, his great triumph 
at having swum from Sestos to Abydos was 
not forgotten. I had come prepared to see a 
solemn mystery, and so far as I could judge 
from the first act it seemed to me very like a 
solemn farce. I forgot that great actors when 
off the stage are dull dogs ; and that even the 
mighty Prospero, without his book and magic 
mantle, was but an ordinary mortal. At this 
juncture Shelley joined us; he never laid aside 
his book and magic mantle; he waved his 
wand, and Byron, after a faint show of defi- 
ance, stood mute; his quick perception of the 
truth of Shelley's comments on his poem trans- 
fixed him, and Shelley's earnestness and just 
criticism held him captive. 

I was however struck with Byron's mental 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 33 

vivacity and wonderful memory ; he defended 
himself with a variety of illustrations, prece- 
dents, and apt quotations from modern author- 
ities, disputing Shelley's propositions, not by 
denying their truth as a whole, but in parts, and 
the subtle questions he put would have puzzled 
a less acute reasoner than the one he had to 
contend with. During this discussion I scanned 
the Pilgrim closely. 

In external appearance Byron realized that 
ideal standard with which imagination adorns 
genius. He was in the prime of life, thirty- 
five ; of middle height, five feet eight and a 
half inches ; regular features, without a stain 
or furrow on his pallid skin, his shoulders broad, 
chest open, body and limbs finely proportioned. 
His small, highly-finished head and curly hair, 
had an airy and graceful appearance from the 
massiveness and length of his throat : you saw 
his genius in his eyes and lips. In short. Na- 
ture could do little more than she had done for 
him, both in outward form and in the inward 
spirit she had given to animate it. But all 
these rare gifts to his jaundiced imagination 
only served to make his one personal defect 
(lameness) the more apparent, as a flaw is 

3 



84 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

magnified in a diamond when polished; and 
he brooded over that blemish as sensitive minds 
will brood until they magnify a wart into a wen. 
His lameness certainly helped to make him 
skeptical, cynical, and savage. There was no 
peculiarity in his dress, it was adapted to the 
climate ; a tartan jacket braided, — he said it 
was the Gordon pattern, and that his mother 
was of that ilk. A blue velvet cap with a gold 
band, and very loose nankeen trousers, strapped 
down so as to cover his feet: his throat was 
not bare, as represented in drawings. At three 
o'clock, one of his servants announced that his 
horses were at the door, which broke off his 
discussion with Shelley, and we all followed 
him to the hall. At the outer door, we found 
three or four very ordinary-looking horses ; they 
had holsters on the saddles, and many other 
superfluous trappings, such as the Italians de- 
light in, and Englishmen eschew. Shelley, and 
an Irish visitor just announced, mounted two 
of these sorry jades. I luckily had my own 
cattle. Byron got into a caleche, and did not ♦ 
mount his horse until we had cleared the gates 
of the town, to avoid, as he said, being stared 
at by the " d — d Englishers," who generally 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 35 

congregated before his house on the Arno. 
After an hour or two of slow riding and lively 
talk, — for he was generally in good spirits when 
on horseback, — -we stopped at a small podere 
on the roadside, and dismounting went into the 
house, in which we found a table with wine 
and cakes. From thence we proceeded into the 
vineyard at the back ; the servant brought two 
brace of pistols, a cane w^as stuck in the ground 
and a five paul-piece, the size of half-a-crown, 
placed in a slit at the top of the cane. Byron, 
Shelley, and I, fired at fifteen paces, and one of 
us generally hit the cane or the coin : our firing 
was pretty equal ; after five or six shots each, 
Byron pocketed the battered money and saun- 
tered about the grounds. We then remounted. 
On our return homewards, Shelley urged Byron 
to complete something he had begun. Byron 
smiled and replied, 

" John Murray, my patron and paymaster, says 
my plays won't act. I don't mind that, for I told 
him they were not written for the stage — but he 
adds, my poesy won't sell : that I do mind, for I 
have an < itching palm.' He urges me to resume 
my old ' Corsair style, to please the ladies.' " 

Shelley indignantly answered. 



36 RECOLLECTIONS OP THE 

" That is very good logic for a bookseller, but 
not for an author : the shop interest is to supply 
the ephemeral demand of the day. It is not for 
him but you ' to put a ring in the monster's nose ' 
to keep him from mischief." 

Byron smiling at Shelley's warmth, said, 

" Jjohn Murray is right, if not righteous : all I 
have yet written has been for women-kind ; you 
must wait until I am forty, their influence will 
then die a natural death, and I will show the 
men what I can do." 

Shelley replied, 

" Do it now — write nothing but what your 
conviction of its truth inspires you to write; 
you should give counsel to the wise, and not 
take it from the foolish. Time will reverse the 
judgment of the vulgar. Contemporary criti- 
cism only represents the amount of ignorance 
genius has to contend with." 

I was then and afterwards pleased and sur- 
prised at Byron's passiveness and docility in 
listening to Shelley — but all who heard him felt 
the charm of his simple, earnest manner ; while 
Byron knew him to be exempt from the egotism, 
pedantry, coxcombry, and, more than all, the 
rivalry of authorship, and that he was the truest 
and most discriminating of his admirers. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 37 

Byron, looking at the western sky, exclaimed, 

" Where is the green your friend the Laker 

talks such fustian about," meaning Coleridge — 

" ' Gazing on the western sky, 

And its peculiar tint of yellow green.' 

Dejection : an Ode. 

" Who ever," asked Byron, "saw a green sky?" 

Shelley was silent, knowing that if he replied, 
Byron would give vent to his spleen. So I said, 
" The sky in England is oftener green than blue." 

"Black, you mean," rejoined Byron ; and this 
discussion brought us to his door. 

As he was dismounting he mentioned two odd 
words that would rhyme. I observed on the 
felicity he had shown in this art, repeating a 
couplet out of Don Juan ; he was both pacified 
and pleased at this, and putting his hand on my 
horse's crest, observed, 

" If you are curious in these matters, look in 
Swift. I will send you a volume ; he beats us 
all hollow, his rhymes are wonderful." 

And then we parted for that day, which I have 
been thus particular in recording, not only as it 
was the first of our acquaintance, but as con- 
taining as fair a sample as I can give of his ap- 
pearance, ordinary habits, and conversation. 



38 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER V. 

His house, his home, his heritage, his lands, 
The laughing dames in whom he did delight. 

* * * * * 

Without a sigh he left, to cross the brine 
And traverse Paynim shores and pass Earth's central line. 

Childe Harold. 

Men of books, particularly Poets, are rarely 
men of action, their mental energy exhausts 
their bodily powers. Byron has been generally 
considered an exception to this rule, he certainly 
so considered himself: let us look at the facts. 

In 1809, he first left England, rode on horse- 
back through Spain and Portugal, 400 miles, 
crossed the Mediterranean on board a frigate, 
and landed in Greece ; where he passed two 
years in sauntering through a portion of that 
small country : this, with a trip to Smyrna, 
Constantinople, Malta, and Gibraltar, generally 
on board our men-of-war, where you have all the 
ease, comfort, and most of the luxuries of your 
own homes; — this is the extent of the voyages 
and travels he was so proud of. Anything 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 39 

more luxurious than sailing on those seas, and 
riding through those lands, and in such a 
blessed climate, I know from experience, is not 
to be found in this world. Taking into account 
the result of these travels as shown in his 
works, he might well boast; he often said, if he 
had ever written a line worth preserving, it was 
Greece that inspired it. After this trip he re- 
turned to Eno:land. and remained there some 
years, four or five ; then abandoned it for ever, 
passed through the Netherlands, went up the 
Rhine, paused for some months in Switzerland, 
crossed the Alps into Italy, and never left that 
peninsula until the last year of his life. He 
was never in France, for when he left England, 
Paris was in the hands of the Allies, and he 
said he could not endure to witness a country 
associated in his mind with so many glorious 
deeds of arts and arms, bullied by " certain 
rascal officers, slaves in authority, .the knaves 
of justice ! " 

To return, however, to his travels. If you 
look at a map you will see what a narrow circle 
comprises his wanderings. Any man might go, 
and many have gone without the aid of steam, 
over the same ground in a few months — even if 
he had to walk with a knapsack, where Byron 



40 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

rode. The Pilgrim moved about like a Pasha, 
with a host of attendants, and all that he and 
they required on the journey. So far as I could 
learn from Fletcher, his yeoman bold — and he 
had been with him from the time of his first 
leaving England, — Byron, wherever he was, so 
far as it was practicable, pursued the same lazy, 
dawdling habits he continued during the time I 
knew him. He was seldom out of his bed be- 
fore noon, when he drank a cup of very strong 
green tea, without sugar or milk. At two, he 
ate a biscuit and drank soda-water. At three 
mounted his horse and sauntered along the road 
— and generally the same road, — if alone, rack- 
ing his brains for fitting matter and rhymes for 
the coming poem, he dined at seven, as frugally 
as anchorites are said in story-books to have 
done, at nine he visited the family of Count 
Gamba, on his return home he sat reading or 
composing until two or three o'clock in the 
morning, and then to bed, often feverish, rest- 
less, and exhausted — to dream, as he said, more 
than to sleep. 

Something very urgent, backed by the impor- 
tunity of those who had influence over him, 
could alone induce him to break through the 
routine I have described, for a day, and it was 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 41 

certain to be resumed on the next, — he was 
constant in this alone. 

His conversation was anything but literary, 
except when Shelley was near him. The char- 
acter he most commonly appeared in was of the 
free and easy sort, such as had been in vogue 
when he was in London, and George IV. was 
Regent ; and his talk was seasoned with anec- 
dotes of the great actors on and off the stage, 
boxers, gamblers, duellists, drunkards, &c., &c., 
appropriately garnished with the slang and 
scandal of that day. Such things had all been 
in fashion, and were at that time considered 
accomplishments by gentlemen ; and of this 
tribe of Mohawks the Prince Regent was the 
chief, and allowed to be the most perfect speci- 
men. Byron, not knowing the tribe was ex- 
tinct, still prided himself on having belonged to 
it ; of nothing was he more indignant, than of 
being treated as a man of letters, instead of as 
a Lord and a man of fashion ; this prevented 
foreigners and literary people from getting on 
with him, for they invariably so offended. His 
long absence had not effaced the mark John 
Bull brands his children with ; the instari he 
loomed above the horizon, on foot or horseback, 
you saw at a glance he was a Britisher. He 



42 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

did not understand foreigners, nor they him ; 
and, during the time I knew him, he associated 
with no Italians except the family of Count 
Gamba. He seemed to take an especial pleas- 
ure in making a clean breast to every new 
comer, as if to mock their previous conceptions 
of him, and to give the lie to the portraits pub- 
lished of him. He said to me, as we were rid- 
ing together alone, shortly after I knew him, 

" Now, confess, you expected to find me a 
* Timon of Athens,' or a ' Timur the Tartar;' 
or did you think I was a mere sing-song driv- 
eller of poesy, full of what I heard Braham 
at a rehearsal call '- Entusamusy ;^ and are you 
not mystified at finding ine what I am, — a man 
of the world — never in earnest — laughing at all 
things mundane." 

Then he muttered, as to himself, — 

" The world is a bundle of hay, 
Mankind are the asses who pull." 

Any man who cultivates his intellectual fac- 
ulty so highly as to seem at times inspired, 
would be too much above us, if, on closer in- 
spection, we should not find it alloyed with 
weaknesses akin to our own. Byron soon put 
you at your ease on this point. Godwin in 
his ' Thoughts on Man,' says " Shakspeare, 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 48 

amongst all his varied characters, has not at- 
tempted to draw a perfect man ; " and Pope 
says,— 

"A perfect man's a thing the world ne'er saw." 
At any rate I should not seek for a model 
amongst men of the pen ; they are too thin- 
skinned and egotistical. In his perverse and 
moody humours, Byron would give vent to his 
Satanic vein. After a long silence, one day 
on horseback, he began : — 

" I have a conscience, although the world 
gives me no credit for it ; I am now repent- 
ing, not of the few ^ns I have committed, but 
of the many I have not committed. There 
are things, too, we should not do, if they were 
not forbidden. My Don Juan was cast aside 
and almost forgotten, until I heard that the 
pharisaic synod in John Murray's back par- 
lour had pronounced it as highly immoral, and 
unfit for publication. ' Because thou art vir- 
tuous thinkest thou there shall be no more 
cakes and ale ? ' Now my brain is throbbing 
and must have vent. I opined gin was in- 
spiration, but cant is stronger. To-day. I had 
another letter warning me against the Snake 
(Shelley). He, alone, in this age of humbug, 
dares stem the current, as he did to-day the 



44 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

flooded Arno in his skiff, although I could not 
observe he made any progress. The attempt 
is better than being swept along as all the 
rest are, with the filthy garbage scoured from 
its banks." 

Taking advantage of this panegyric on Shel- 
ley I observed, he might do him a great ser- 
vice at little cost, by a friendly word or two 
in his next work, such as he had bestowed 
on authors of less merit. 

Assuming a knowing look, he continued, 

" All trades have their mysteries ; if we crack 
up a popular author, he repays us in the same 
coin, principal and interest. A friend may have 
repaid money lent, — can't say any of mine 
have ; but who ever heard of the interest being 
added thereto?" 

I rejoined, 

" By your own showing you are indebted to 
Shelley ; some of his best verses are to express 
his admiration of your genius." 

" Ay," he said, with a significant look, " who 
reads them ? If we puffed the Snake, it might 
not turn out a profitable investment. If he 
cast off the slough of his mystifying meta- 
physics, he would want no puffing." 

Seeing I was not satisfied, he added, 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 45 

" If we introduced Shelley to our readers, 
they might draw comparisons, and they are 
' odorous.^ " 

After Shelley's death, Byron, in a letter to 
Moore, of the 2d of August, 1822, says, 

" There is another man gone, about whom \ 

the world was ill-naturedly, and ignorantly, and 
brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him 
justice now^ when he can be no better for it." 

In a letter to Murray of an earlier date, he 
says, 

" You were all mistaken about Shelley, who' 
was, without exception, the best and least sel- 
fish man I ever knew." 

And, again, he says, " You are all mistaken 
about Shelley; you do not know how mild, 
how tolerant, how good he^ was." 

What Byron says of the world, that it will, 
perhaps, do Shelley justice when he can be no 
better for it, is far more applicable to himself. 
If the world erred, they did so in ignorance ; 
Shelley was a myth to them. Byron had no 
such plea to offer, but he was neither just nor 
generous, and never drew his weapon to re- 
dress any wrongs but his own. 



46 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER VI. 

Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach 

Who please, the more because they preach in vain. 
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, 
Sermons and soda-water the day after. 

DoK Juan. 

Byron has been accused of drinking deeply. 
Our universities, certainly, did turn out more 
famous drinkers than scholars. In the good old 
times, to drink lustily was the characteristic of 
all Englishmen, just as tuft-hunting is now. 
Eternal swilling, and the rank habits and brag- 
gadocio manners which it engendered, came to 
a climax in George I V.'s reign. Since then, 
excessive drinking has gone out of fashion, but 
an elaborate style of gastronomy has come in to 
fill up the void ; so there is not much gained. 
Byron used to boast of the quantity of wine he 
had drunk. He said, " We young Whigs im- 
bibed claret, and so saved our constitutions : the 
Tories stuck to port, and destroyed theirs and 
their country's." 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 47 

He bragged, too, of his prowess in riding, 
boxing, fencing, and even walking ; but to excel 
in these things feet are as necessary as hands. 
It was difficult to avoid smiling at his boasting 
and self-glorification. In the water a fin is better 
than a foot, and in that element he did well; he 
was built for floating, — with a flexible body, 
open chest, broad beam, and round limbs. If 
the sea was smooth and wq,rm, he would stay 
in it for hours ; but as he seldom indulged in 
this sport, and when he did, over-exerted him- 
self, he suffered severely ; which observing, and 
knowing how deeply he would be mortified at 
being beaten, I had the magnanimity when con- 
tending with him to give in. 

He had a misgiving in his mind that I was 
trifling with him ; and one day as we were on 
the shore, and The Bolivar at anchor, about three 
miles off", he insisted on our trying conclusions ; 
we were to swim to the yacht, dine in the sea 
alongside of her, treading water the while, and 
then to return to the. shore. It was calm and 
hot, and seeing he would not be fobbed off", we 
started. I reached the boat a long time before 
he did; ordered the edibles to be ready, and 
floated until he arrived. We ate our fare lei- 



48 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

surely, from off a grating that floated alongside, 
drank a bottle of ale, and I smoked a cigar, 
which he tried to extinguish, — as he never 
smoked. We then put about, and struck off 
towards the shore. We had not got a hundred 
yards on our passage, when he retched violently, 
and, as that is often followed by cramp, I urged 
him to put his hand on my shoulder that I 
might tow him back to the schooner. 

" Keep off, you villain, don't touch me. I'll 
drown ere I give in." 

I answered as lago did to Roderigo, 

" * A fig for drowning I drown cats and blind 
puppies.' I shall go on board and try the effects 
of a glass of grog to stay my stomach." 

" Come on," he shouted, " I am always better 
after vomiting." 

With difficulty I deluded him back ; I went 
on board, and he. sat on the steps of the accom- 
modation-ladder, with his feet in the water. I 
handed him a wine-glass of brandy, and screened 
him from the burning sun. He was in a sullen 
mood, but after a time resumed his usual tone. 
Nothing could induce him to be landed in the 
schooner's boat, though I protested I had had 
enough of the water. 



LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 49 

" You may do as you like," he called out, and 
plumped in, and we swam on shore. 

He never afterwards alluded to this event, nor 
to his prowess in swimming, to me, except in 
the past tense. He was ill, and kept his bed for 
two days afterwards. 

To return to his drinking propensities, after 
this digression about his gymnastic prowess : I 
must say, that of all his vauntings, it was, luckily 
for him, the emptiest — that is, after he left Eng- 
land and his boon companions, as I know nothing 
of what he did there. From all that I heard or 
witnessed of his habits abroad, he was and had 
been exceedingly abstemious in eating and 
drinking. When alone, he drank a glass or two 
of small claret or hock, and when utterly ex- 
hausted at night a single glass of grog; which 
when I mixed it for him I lowered to what 
sailors call " water bewitched," and he never 
made any remark. I once, to try him, omitted 
the alcohol ; he then said, " Tre, have you not 
forgotten the creature comfort ? " I then put in 
two spoonfuls, and he was satisfied. This does 
not look like an habitual toper. His English 
acquaintances in Italy were, he said in derision, 
all milksops. On the rare occasions of any of 
4 



50 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

his former friends visiting him, he would urge 
them to have a carouse with him, but they had 
grown wiser. He used to say that little Tommy 
Moore was the only man he then knew who 
stuck to the bottle and put him on his mettle, 
adding, " But he is a native of the damp isle, 
where men subsist by suction." 

Byron had not damaged his body by strong 
drinks, but his terror of getting fat was so great 
that he reduced his diet to the point of absolute 
starvation. He was of that soft, lymphatic tem- 
perament which it is almost impossible to keep 
within a moderate compass, particularly as in 
his case his lameness prevented his taking exer- 
"cise. When he added to his weight, even stand- 
ing was painful, so he resolved to keep down to 
eleven stone, or shoot himself. He said every- 
thing he swallowed was instantly converted into 
tallow and deposited on his ribs. 

He was the only human being I ever met with 
who had sufficient self-restraint and resolution 
to resist this proneness to fatten : he did so ; and 
at Genoa, where he was last weighed, he was 
ten stone and nine pounds, and looked much 
less. This was not from vanity about his per- 
sonal appearance, but from a better motive ; and 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 51 



» 



as, like Justice Greedy, he was always hungry, 
his merit was the greater. Occasionally he 
relaxed his vigilance, when he swelled apace. 

I remember one of his old friends saying, 
" Byron, how well you are looking ! " If he had 
stopped there it had been well, but when he 
added, " You are getting fat," Byron's brow 
reddened, and his eyes flashed — " Do you call 
getting fat looking well, as if I were a hog ? " 
and, turning to me, he muttered, " The beast, I 
can hardly keep my hands off him." The man 
who thus offended him was the husband of the 
lady addressed as ' Genevra,' and the original of 
his ' Zuleika,' in the ' Bride of Abydos.' I don't 
think he had much appetite for his dinner that 
day, or for many days, and never forgave the 
man who, so far from wishing to offend, intended 
to pay him a compliment. 

Byron said he had tried all sorts of experi- 
ments to stay his hunger, without adding to his 
bulk. " I swelled," he said, " at one time to 
fourteen stone, so I clapped the muzzle on my 
jaws, and, like the hybernating animals, con- 
sumed my own fat." 

He would exist on biscuits and soda-water for 
days together, then, to allay the eternal hunger 



52 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

« 

gnawing at his vitals, he would make up a 
horrid mess of cold potatoes, rice, fish, or greens, 
deluged in vinegar, and gobble it up like a 
famished dog. On either of these unsavoury- 
dishes, with a biscuit and a glass or two of 
Rhine wine, he cared not how sour, he called 
feasting sumptuously. Upon my observing he 
might as well have fresh fish and vegetables, 
instead of stale, he laughed and answered, 

" I have an advantage over you, I have no 
palate ; one thing is as good as another to me." 

" Nothing," I said, " disagrees with the nat- 
ural man, he fasts and gorges, his nerves and 
brains don't bother him ; but if you wish to 
live ? " 

" Who wants to live ? " he replied, " not I. 
The Byrons are a short-lived race on both sides, 
father and mother : longevity is hereditary : I am 
nearly at the end of my tether. I don't care for 
death a d — n : it is her sting I I can't bear pain." 

His habits and want of exercise damaged 
him, not drink. It must be borne in mind, 
moreover, that his brain was always working at 
high pressure. The consequences resulting from 
his way of life were low or intermittent fevers ; 
these last had fastened on him in his early 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 53 

travels in the Levant ; and there is this pecu- 
liarity in malaria fevers, that if you have once 
had them, you are ever after peculiarly suscepti- 
ble to a renewal of their attacks if within their 
reach, and Byron was hardly ever out of it. 
Venice and Ravenna are belted in with swamps, 
and fevers xire rife in the autumn. By starving 
his body Byron kept his brains clear ; no man 
had brighter eyes or a clearer voice ; and his 
resolute bearing and prompt replies, when ex- 
cited, gave to his body an appearance of mus- 
cular power that imposed on strangers. I never 
doubted, for he was indifferent to life, and 
prouder than Lucifer, that if he had drawn his 
sword in Greece, or elsewhere, he would have 
thrown away the scabbard. 



54 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER VII. 

thou, who plumed with strong desire 

Would'st float above the earth, beware! 
A shadow tracks thy flight of fire — 
Night is coming! 

The Two Spirits. — Shelley. 

In the annals of authors I cannot find one 
who wrote under so many discouragements as 
Shelley; for even Bunyan's dungeon walls 
echoed the cheers of hosts of zealous disciples 
on the outside, whereas Shelley could number, 
his readers on his fingers. He said, " I can only 
print my writings by stinting myself in food ! " 
Published, or sold openly, they were not. 

The utter loneliness in which he was con- 
demned to pass the largest portion of his life 
would have paralyzed any brains less subtilized 
by genius than his were. Yet he was social 
and cheerful, and, although frugal himself, most 
liberal to others, while to serve a friend he was 
ever ready to make any sacrifice. It was, per- 
haps, fortunate he was known to so few, for 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYROIST. 55 

those few kept him close shorn. He went to 
Ravenna in 1821 on Byron's business, and, 
writing to his wife, makes this comment on the 
Pilgrim's asking him to execute a delicate com- 
mission : "But it seems destined that I am 
always to have some active part in the affairs 
of everybody whom I approach." And so he 
had. 

Shelley, in his elegy on the death of Keats, 
gives this picture of himself: 

" 'Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, 
A phantom amongst men ; companionless 
As the last cloud of an expiring storm. 
Whose thunder is its knell ; he, as I guess. 
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, 
Actseon-like, and now he fled astray 
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness. 
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, 
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey." 

Every day I passed some hours with Byron, 
and very often my evenings with Shelley and 
Williams, so that when my memory summons 
one of them to appear, the others are sure to 
follow in his wake. If Byron's reckless frank- 
ness and apparent cordiality warmed your feel- 
ings, his sensitiveness, irritability, and the per- 



^ 



56 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

verseness of his temper, cooled them. I was 
not then thirty, and the exigences of my now 
full-blown vanities were unsated, and my cred- 
ulity unexhausted. I believed in many things 
then, and believe in some now ; I could not sym- 
pathize with Byron, who believed in nothing. 

" As for love, friendship, and your entusa' 
musy^^^ said he, " they must run their course. If 
you are not hanged or drowned before you are 
forty, you will wonder at all the foolish things 
they have made you say and do, — as I do now." 

" I will go over to the Shelleys," I answered, 
" and hear their opinions on the subject." 
^ " Ay, the Snake has fascinated you ; I am for 
making a man of the world of you ; they will 
mould you into a Frankenstein monster : so 
good-night ! " 

Goethe's Mephistopheles calls the serpent 
that tempted Eve, " My Aunt — the renowned 
snake ; " and as Shelley translated and repeated 
passages of ' Faust' — to, as he said, impregnate 
Byron's brain, — when he came to that passage, 
" My Aunt, the renowned snake," Byron said, 
" Then you are her nephew," and henceforth 
he often called Shelley, the Snake ; his bright 
eyes, slim figure, and noiseless movements. 



LAST DAYS OE SHELLEY AND BYRON. 5T 

strengthened, if it did not suggest, the compari- 
son. Byron was the real snake — a dangerous 
mischief-maker ; his wit or humour might force 
a grim smile, or hollow laugh, from the standers 
by, but they savoured more of pain than play- 
fulness, and made you dissatisfied with yourself 
and him. When I left his gloomy hall, and the 
echoes of the heavy iron-plated door died away, 
I could hardly refrain from shouting with joy as 
I hurried along the broad-flagged terrace which 
overhangs the pleasant river, cheered on my 
course by the cloudless sky, soft air, and fading 
light, which close an Italian day. 

After a hasty dinner at my albergo, I hastened 
along the Arno to the hospitable and cheerful 
abode of the Shelleys. There I found those 
sympathies and sentiments which the Pilgrim 
denounced as illusions believed in as the only 
realities. 

Shelley's mental activity was infectious ; he 
kept your brain in constant action. Its effect 
on his comrade was very striking. Williams 
gave up all his accustomed sports for books, and 
the bettering of his mind ; he had excellent 
natural ability; and the Poet delighted to see 
the seeds he had sown, germinating. Shelley 



58 • RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

said he was the sparrow educating the young of 
the cuckoo. After a protracted labour, Ned was 
delivered of a five-act play. Shelley was san- 
guine that his pupil would succeed as a dramatic 
writer. One morning I was in Mrs. Williams's 
drawing-room, by appointment, to hear Ned 
read an act of his drama. I sat with an aspect 
as caustic as a critic who was to decide his fate. 
Whilst thus intent Shelley stood before us with 
a most woeful expression. 

Mrs. Williams started up, exclaiming, " What's 
the matter, Percy ? " 

" Mary has threatened me." 

" Threatened you with what ? " 

He looked mysterious and too agitated to 
reply. 

Mrs. Williams repeated, " With what ? to box 
your ears ? " 

" Oh, much worse than that ; Mary says she 
will have a party ; there are English singers 
here, the Sinclairs, and she will ask them, and 
every one she or you know — oh, the horror ! " 

We all burst into a laugh except his friend 
Ned. 

" It will kill me." 

" Music, kill you ! " said Mrs. Williams. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 59 

" Why, you have told me, you flatterer, that 
you loved music." 

" So I do. It's the company terrifies me. 
For pity go to Mary and intercede for me ; I 
will submit to any other species of torture than 
that of being bored to death by idle ladies and 
gentlemen." 

After various devices it was resolved that Ned 
Williams should wait upon the lady, — he being 
gifted with a silvery tongue, and sympathizing 
with the Poet in his dislike of fine ladies, — and 
see what he could do to avert the threatened 
invasion of the Poet's solitude. Meanwhile, 
Shelley remained in a state of restless ecstacy ; 
he could not even read or sit. Ned returned 
with a grave face ; the Poet stood as a criminal 
stands at the bar, whilst the solemn arbitrator 
of his fate decides it. " The lady," commenced 
Ned, has " set her heart on having a party, and 
will not be baulked;" but, seeing the Poet's 
despair, he added, " It is to be limited to those 
here assembled, and some of Count Gamba's 
family; and instead of a musical feast — as we 
have no souls — we are to have a dinner." The 
Poet hopped off, rejoicing, making a noise I 
should have thought whistling, but that he was 
ignorant of that accomplishment. 



60 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

I have seen Shelley and B3Ton in society, and 
the contrast was as marked as their characters. 
The former, not thinking of himself, was as 
much at ease as in his own home, omitting no 
occasion of obliging those whom he came in 
contact with, readily conversing with all or any 
who addressed him, irrespective of age or rank, 
dress or address. To the first party I went with 
Byron, as we were on our road, he said, 

" It's so long since I have been in English 
society, you must tell me what are their present 
customs. Does rank lead the way, or does the 
ambassadress pair us off into the dining-room ? 
Do they ask people to wine ? Do we exit with 
the women, or stick to our claret ? " 

On arriving, he was flushed, fussy, embar- 
rassed, over ceremonious, and ill at ease, evi- 
dently thinking a great deal of himself and very 
little of others. He had learnt his manners, as 
I have said, during the Regency, when society 
was more exclusive than even now, and conse- 
quently more vulgar. 

To know an author, personally, is too often 
but to destroy the illusion created by his works ; 
if you withdraw the veil of your idol's sanctuary, 
and see him in his night-cap, you discover a 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 61 

querulous old crone, a sour pedant, a supercilious 
coxcomb, a servile tuft-hunter, a saucy snob, or, 
at best, an ordinary mortal. Instead of the high- 
minded seeker after truth and abstract knowl- 
edge, with a nature too refined to bear the vul- 
garities of life, as we had imagined, we find him 
full of egotism and vanity, and eternally fretting 
and fuming about trifles. As a general rule, 
therefore, it is wise to avoid writers whose works 
amuse or delight you, for when you see them 
they will delight you no more. Shelley was a 
grand exception to this rule. To form a just 
idea of his poetry, you should have witnessed 
his daily life ; his words and actions best illus- 
trated his writings. If his glorious conception 
of Gods and men constituted an atheist, I am 
afraid all that listened were little better. Some- 
times he would run through a great work on 
science, condense the author's laboured exposi- 
tion, and by substituting simple words for the 
jargon of the schools, make the most abstruse 
subject transparent. The cynic Byron acknowl- 
edged him to be the best and ablest man he had 
ever known. The truth was, Shelley loved every 
thing better than himself. Self-preservation is, 
they say, the first law of nature, with him it 



62 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

was the last ; and the only pain he ever gave his 
friends arose from the utter indifference with 
which he treated every thing concerning him- 
self. I was bathing one day in a deep pool in 
the Arno, and astonished the Poet by perform- 
ing a series of aquatic gymnastics, which I had 
learnt from the natives of the South Seas. On 
my coming out, whilst dressing, Shelley said, 
mom'nfuUy, 

" Why can't I swim, it seems so very easy ? " 

I answered, " Because you think you can't. 
If you determine, you will ; take a header off 
this bank, and when you rise turn on your back, 
you will float like a duck ; but you must reverse 
the arch in your spine, for it's now bent the 
wrong way." 

He doffed his jacket and trowsers, kicked off 
his shoes and socks, and plunged in ; and there 
he lay stretched out on the bottom like a conger 
eel, not making the least effort or struggle to 
save himself. He would have been drowned if 
I had not instantly fished him out. When he 
recovered his breath, he said : 

" I always find the bottom of the well, and 
they say Truth lies there. In another minute I 
should have found it, and you would have found 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 63 

an empty shell. It is an easy way of getting rid 
of the body." 

" What would Mrs. Shelley have said to me 
if I had gone back with your empty cage ? " 

" Don't tell Mary — not a word ! " he rejoined, 
and then continued, " It's a great temptation ; 
in another minute, I might have been in another 
planet." 

" But as you always find the bottom," I ob- 
served, "you might have sunk 'deeper than did 
ever plummet sound. ' " 

" I am quite easy on that subject," said the 
Bard. " Death is the veil, which those who 
live call life: they sleep, and it is lifted. Intel- 
ligence should be imperishable ; the art of print- 
ing has made it so in this planet." 

"Do you believe in the immortality of the 
spirit ? " 

He continued, " Certainly not ; how can I ? 
We know nothing ; we have no evidence ; we 
cannot express our inmost thoughts. They are 
incomprehensible even to ourselves." 

" Why," I asked, "^do you call yourself an 
atheist ? it annihilates you in this world." 

" It is a word of abuse to stop discussion, a 
painted devil to frighten the foolish, a threat to 



^ 



64 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

intimidate the wise and good. I used it to ex- 
press my abhorrence of superstition ; I took up 
the word, as a knight took up a gauntlet, in de- 
fiance of injustice. The delusions of Christianity 
are fatal to genius and originality : they limit 
thought." 
«^ Shelley's thirst for knowledge was unquench- 
able. He set to work on a book, or a pyramid 
of books ; his eyes glistening with an energy as 
fierce as that of the most sordid gold-digger 
who w^orks at a rock of quartz, crushing his way 
through all impediments, no grain of the pure 
ore escaping his eager scrutiny. I called on him 
one morning at ten, he was in his study with a 
German folio open, resting on the broad marble 
mantel-piece, over an old-fashioned fire-place, 
and with a dictionary in his hand. He always 
read standing if possible. He had. promised 
over night to go with me, but now begged me 
to let him off". I then rode to Leghorn, eleven 
or twelve miles distant, and passed the day 
there ; on returning at six in the evening to dine 
with Mrs. Shelley and the Williams's, as I had 
engaged to do, I ^yent into the Poet's room and 
found him exactly in the position in which I 
had left him in the morning, but looking pale 
and exhausted. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 65 

" Well," I said, " have you found it ? " 

Shutting the book and going to the window, 
he replied, " No, I have lost it : " with a deep 
sigh : " ' I have lost a day.' " 

" Cheer up, my lad, and come to dinner." 

Putting his long fingers through his masses 
of wild tangled hair, he answered faintly, " You 
go, I have dined — late eating don't do for me." 

" What is this ? " I asked as I was going out 
of the room, pointing to one of his bookshelves 
with a plate containing bread and cold meat on 
it. 

" That," — colouring, — "why that must be my 
dinner. It's very foolish ; I thought I had eaten 
it." 

Saying I was determined that he should for 
once have a regular meal, I lugged him into 
the dining-room, but he brought a book with 
him and read more than he ate. He seldom 
ate at stated periods, but only when hungry, — 
and then like the birds, if he saw something 
edible lying about, — but the cupboards of liter- 
ary ladies are like Mother Hubbard's, bare. His 
drink was water, or tea if he could get it, bread 
was literally his staff of life ; other things he 
thought superfluous. An Italian who knew his 
5 



66 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

way of life, not believing it possible that any 
human being would live as Shelley did, unless 
compelled by poverty, was astonished when he 
was told the amount of his income, and thought 
he was defrauded or grossly ignorant of the 
value of money. He, therefore, made a prop- 
osition which much amused the Poet, that he, 
the friendly Italian, would undertake for ten 
thousand crowns a-year to keep Shelley like a 
grand Seigneur, to provide his table with luxu- 
ries, his house with attendants, a carriage and 
opera box for my lady, besides adorning his 
p'erson after the most approved Parisian style. 
Mrs. Shelley's toilette was not included in the 
wily Italian's estimates. The fact was, Shelley 
stinted himself to bare necessaries, and then 
often lavished the money, saved by unprece- 
dented self-denial, on selfish fellows who denied 
themselves nothing ; such as the great philos- 
opher had in his eye when he said, " It is the 
nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set a 
house on fire, an' it were only to roast their 
own eggs." 

Byron on our voyage to Greece, talking of 
England, after commenting on his own wrongs, 
said, " And Shelley, too, the best and most 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 67 

benevolent of men ; they hooted him out of 
his country like a mad-dog, for questioning a 
dogma. Man is the same rancorous beast now 
that he was from the beginning, and if the 
Christ they profess to worship reappeared, they 
would again crucify him." 



68 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Where the pine its garland weaves 
Of sapless green and ivy dun, 
Round stems that never kiss the sun, 
Where the lawns and pastures be 
And the sand-hills of the sea. 

r 

Hie Invitation. — Shelley. 

Byron's literary was, like Alexander's mili- 
tary career, one great triumph ; but whilst he 
was at the zenith of his popularity, he railed 
against the world's injustice. Was this insan- 
ity, or what polite doctors now call a softening 
of the brain ? I suppose, by the ' world ' he 
meant no more than the fashionable set he had 
seen squeezed together in a drawing-room, and 
by all the press that attacked him — the fraction 
of it which took its tone from some smaU but 
active clique : as to friends deserting him, that 
could not be, for it was his boast that he never 
had attempted to make any after his school 
hallucinations. But in the pride of his strength, 
and the audacity of his youth, enemies he cer- 
■*^ainly did make, and when they saw an oppor- 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 69 

tunity of getting rid of a supercilious rival, they 
instinctively took advantage of it. As to the 
Poet's differences with his wife, they must have 
appeared absurd to men who were as indiffer- 
ent to their own wives as were the majority of 
Byron's enemies. 

When the most worldly wise and unimpas- 
sioned marry, they take a leap in the dark, and 
can no more foresee the consequences, than poets, 
— owls blinded by the light of their vain imag- 
ination. The worldly wise, not having risked or 
anticipated much, stand to their bargain "for 
better or worse," and say nothing about it ; but 
the irascible tribe of songsters, when they find 
that marriage is not exactly what they imagined 
it to be, " proclaim their griefs from the house- 
top," as Byron did. 

Very pretty books have been written on the 
' Loves of the Angels,' and ' Loves of the Poets,' 
and Love universal — but when lovers are paired 
and caged together in holy matrimony, the cur- 
tain is dropped, and we hear no more of them. 
It may be, they moult their feathers and lose 
their song. Byron's marriage must not be class- 
ed with those of the Poets, but of the worldly 
wise, he was not under the illusion of love, but 



70 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

of money. If he had left his wife and cut so- 
ciety (the last he was resolved on doing), he 
would have been content : that his wife and so- 
ciety should have cast him off, was a mortifica- 
tion his pride could never forgive nor forget. As 
to the oft-vexed question of the Poet's separation 
from his wife, he has told the facts in prose and 
verse ; but omitted to state, that he treated 
women as things devoid of soul or sense ; he 
would not eat, pray, walk, nor talk with them. 
If he had told us this, who would have marvelled 
that a lady, tenderly reared and richly endowed, 
pious, learned, and prudent, deluded into marry- 
ing such a man, should have thought him mad 
or worse, and sought safety by flight. Within 
certain degrees of affinity marriages are forbid- 
den ; so they should be where there is no natural 
affinity of feelings, habits, tastes, or sympathies. 
It is very kind in the saints to ally themselves to 
sinners, but in ninety-nine cases out of one 
hundred, it turns out a failure ; in Byron's case, 
it was signally so. 

In all the transactions of his life, his intense 
anxiety to cut a good figure made him cruelly 
unjust to others. In fact, his pride and vanity 
mastered him, and he made no effort to conceal 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 71 

or to control their dominion, reckless how it 
marred his worldly advantages. Amidst the 
general homage paid to his genius, his vanity 
reverted to his early disappointments, when he 
was baffled and compelled to fly, and though 
Parthian-like he discharged his arrows on his 
pursuers, he lost the battle. 

Shelley had a far loftier spirit. His pride was 
spiritual. When attacked, he neither fled nor 
stood at bay, nor altered his course, but calmly 
went on with heart and mind intent on elevat- 
ing his species. Whilst men tried to force him 
down to their level, he toiled to draw their minds 
upwards. His words were, " I always go on 
until I am stopped, and I never am stopped." 
Like the Indian palms, Shelley never flourished 
far from water. When compelled to take up his 
quarters in a town, he every morning with the 
instinct that guides the water-birds, fled to the 
nearest lake, river, or seashore, and only returned 
to roost at night. If debarred from this, he 
sought out the most solitary places. Towns and 
crowds distracted him. Even the silent and half- 
deserted cities of Italy, with their temples, pal- 
aces, paintings, and sculpture, could not make 
him stay, if there was a wood or water within 



72 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

his reach. At Pisa, he had a river under his 
window, and a Pine forest in the neighbourhood. 
I accompanied Mrs. Shelley to this wood in 
search of the Poet, on one of those brilliant 
spring mornings we on the wrong side of the 
Alps are so rarely blessed with. A caleche took 
us out of Pisa through the gate of the Cascine ; 
we drove through the Cascine and onwards for 
two or three miles, traversing the vineyards and 
farms, on the Grand Ducal estate. On ap- 
proaching some farm buildings, near which were 
a hunting-palace and chapel, we dismissed the 
carriage, directing the driver to meet us at a 
certain spot in the afternoon. We then walked 
on, not exactly knowing what course to take, 
and were exceedingly perplexed on coming to 
an open space, from which four roads radiated. 
There we stopped until I learnt from a Conta- 
dino, that the one before us led directly to the 
sea, which was two or three miles distant, the 
one on the right, led to the Serchio, and that on 
the left, to the Arno : we decided on taking the 
road to the sea. We proceeded on our journey 
over a sandy plain; the sun being near its zenith. 
Walking was not included among the number 
of accomplishments in which Mrs. Shelley ex- 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 73 

celled ; the loose sand and hot sun soon knocked 
her up. When we got under the cool canopy 
of the pines, she stopped and allowed me to 
hunt for her husband. I now strode along ; the 
forest was on my right hand, and extensive 
pastures on my left, with herds of oxen, camels, 
and horses grazing thereon. I came upon the 
open sea at a place called Gombo, from whence 
I could see Via Reggio, the Gulf of Spezzia, 
and the mountains beyond. After bathing, see- 
ing nothing of the Poet, I penetrated the densest 
part of the forest, ever and anon making the 
woods ring with the name of Shelley, and scar- 
ing the herons and water-birds from the chain of 
stagnant pools which impeded my progress. 

With no landmarks to guide me, nor sky to 
be seen above, I was bewildered in this wilder- 
ness of pines and ponds ; so I sat down, struck 
a light, and smoked a cigar. A red man would 
have known his course by the trees themselves, 
their growth, form, and colour ; or if a footstep 
had passed that day, he would have hit upon its 
trail. As I mused upon his sagacity and my 
own stupidity, the braying of a brother jackass 
startled me. He was followed by an old man 
picking up pine cones. I asked him if he had 
seen a stranger ? 



74 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

" L'Inglese malincolico haunts the wood male- 
detta. I will show you his nest." 

As we advanced, the ground swelled into 
mounds and hollows. By-and-by the old fellow 
pointed with his stick to a hat, books, and loose 
papers lying about, and then to a deep pool of 
dark glimmering water, saying, " Eccolo ! " I 
thought he meant that Shelley was in or under 
the water. The careless, not to say impatient, 
way in which the Poet bore his burden of life, 
caused a vague dread amongst his family and 
friends that he might lose or cast it away at any 
moment. 

The strong light streamed through the open- 
ing of the trees. One of the pines, undermined 
by the water, had fallen into it. Under its lee, 
and nearly hidden, sat the Poet, gazing on the 
dark mirror beneath, so lost in his bardish reverie 
that he did not hear my approach. There the 
trees were stunted and bent, and their crowns 
were shorn like friars by the sea breezes, except- 
ing a cluster of three, under which Shelley's 
traps were lying; these overtopped the rest. 
To avoid startling the Poet out of his dream, I 
squatted under the lofty trees, and opened his 
books. One was a volume of his favourite 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 75 

Greek dramatist, Sophocles, — the same that I 
found in his pocket after his death — and the other 
was a volume of Shakspeare. I then hailed 
him, and, turning his head, he answered faintly, 

" Hollo, come in." 

" Is this your study ? " I asked. 

" Yes," he answered, " and these trees are my 
books — they tell no lies. You are sitting on the 
stool of inspiration," he exclaimed. " In those 
three pines the weird sisters are imprisoned, and 
this," pointing to the water, " is their cauldron 
of black broth. The Pythian priestesses uttered 
their oracles from below — now they are muttered 
from above. Listen to the solemn music in the 
pine-tops — don't you hear the mournful mur- 
murings of the sea ? Sometimes they rave and 
roar, shriek and howl, like a rabble of priests. 
In a tempest, when a ship sinks, they catch the 
despairing groans of the drowning mariners. 
Their chorus is the eternal wailing of wretched 
men." 

" They, like the world," I observed, " seem to 
take no note of wretched women. The sighs 
and wailing you talk about are not those of 
wretched men afar off, but are breathed by a 
woman near at hand — not from the pine-tops, 
but by a forsaken lady." 



76 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

" What do you mean ? " he asked. 

" Why, that an hour or two ago I left your 
wife, Mary Shelley, at the entrance of this gi'ove, 
in despair at not finding you." 

He started up, snatched up his scattered books, 
and papers, thrust them into his hat and jacket 
pockets, sighing " Poor Mary I her's is a sad 
fate. Come along ; she can't bear solitude, nor 
I society — the quick coupled with the dead." 

He glided along with his usual swiftness, for 
nothing could make him pause for an instant 
when he had an object in view, until he had at- 
tained it. On hearing our voices, Mrs. Shelley 
joined us ; her clear gray eyes and thoughtful 
brow expressing the love she could not speak. 
To stop Shelley's self-reproaches, or to hide her 
own emotions, she began in a bantering tone, 
chiding and coaxing him : — 

" What a wild-goose you are, Percy ; if my 
thoughts have strayed from my book, it was to 
the opera, and my new dress from Florence — 
and especially the ivy wreath so much admired 
for my hair, and not to you, you silly fellow ! 
When I left home, my satin slippers had not 
arrived. These are serious matters to gentle- 
women, enough to ruffle the serenest tempered. 



last: days of SHELLEY AND BYRON. 77 

As to you and your ungallant companion, I had 
forgotten that such things are ; but as it is the 
ridiculous custom to have men at balls and 
operas, I must take you with me, though, from 
your uncouth ways, you will be taken for Val- 
entine and he for Orson." 

Shelley, like other students, would, when the 
spell that bound his faculties was broken, shut 
his books, and indulge in the wildest flights of 
mirth and folly. As this is a sport all can join 
in, we talked and laughed, and shrieked, and 
shouted, as we emerged from under the shad- 
ows of the melancholy pines and their nodding 
plumes, into the now cool purple twilight and 
open country. The cheerful and graceful peas- 
ant girls, returning home from the vineyards and 
olive groves, stopped to look at us. The old man 
I had met in the morning gathering pine cones, 
passed hurriedly by with his donkey, giving 
Shelley a wide berth, and evidently thinking 
that the melancholy Englishman had now be- 
come a raving maniac. Sancho says, " Bless- 
ings on the man who invented sleep ; " the man 
who invented laughing deserves no less. 

The day I found Shelley in the pine forest, he 
was writing verses on a guitar. I picked up a 



78 ■ RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

fragment, but could only make out the first two 

lines : — 

" Ariel, to Miranda take 
This slave of music." 

It was a frightful scrawl ; words smeared out 
with his finger, and one upon the other, over 
and over in tiers, and all run together in most 
" admired disorder ; " it might have been taken 
for a sketch of a marsh overgrown with bul- 
rushes, and the blots for wild ducks ; such a 
dashed off daub as self-conceited artists mistake 
for a manifestation of genius. On my observ- 
ing this to him, he answered, 

" When my brain gets heated with thought, 
it soon boils, and throws off images and words 
faster than I can skim them off. In the morn- 
ing, when cooled down, out of the rude sketch 
as you justly call it, I shall attempt a drawing. 
If you ask me why I publish what few or none 
will care to read, it is that the spirits I have 
raised haunt me until they are sent to the devil 
of a printer. All authors are anxious to breech 
their bantlings." 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 79 



CHAPTER IX. 

So as we rode, we talked; the swift thought, 
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not, 
But flew from brain to brain. 

Shelley. 

One day I drove the poet to Leghorn. In 
answer to my questions, Shelley said, " In writ- 
ing the Cenci my object was to see how I could 
succeed in describing passions I have never 
felt, and to tell the most dreadful story in pure 
and refined language. The image of Beatrice 
haunted me after seeing her portrait. The story 
is well authenticated, and the details far more 
horrible than I have painted them. The Cenci 
is a work of art ; it is not coloured by my feel- 
ings, nor obscured by my metaphysics. I don't 
think much of it. It gave me less trouble than 
anything I have written of the same length. 

" I am now writing a play for the stage. It 
is affectation to say we write a play for any 
other purpose. The subject is from English 
history; in style and manner I shall approach 



80 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

as near our great dramatist as my feeble powers 
will permit. King Lear is my model, for that 
is nearly perfect. I am amazed at my presump- 
tion. Poets should be modest. My audacity 
savours of madness. 

" Considering the labour requisite to excel in 
composition, I think it would be better to stick 
to one style. The clamour for novelty is lead- 
ing us all astray. Yet, at Ravenna, I urged 
^ Byron to come out of the dismal ' wood of 
error' into the sun, to write something new and 
cheerful. Don Juan is the result. The poetry 
is superior to Childe Harold, and the plan, or 
rather want of plan, gives scope to his astonish- 
ing natural powers. 

" My friends say my Prometheus is too wild, 
ideal, and perplexed with imagery. It may be 
so. It has no resemblance to the Greek drama. 
It is original ; and cost me severe mental la- 
bour. Authors, like mothers, prefer the children 
who have given them most trouble. Milton 
preferred his Paradise Regained, Petrarch his 
Africa, and Byron his Doge of Venice. 
/ " I have the vanity to write only for poetical 
minds, and must be satisfied with few readers. 
Byron is ambitious ; he writes for all, and all 
read his works. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 81 

" With regard to the great question, the Sys- 
tem of the Universe, I have no curiosity on the 
subject. I am content to see no farther into 
futurity than Plato and Bacon. My mind is 
tranquil ; I have no fears and some hopes. In 
our present gross material state our faculties 
are clouded ; — when Death removes our clay 
coverings the mystery will be solved." 

He thought a play founded on Shakspeare's 
* Timon ' would be an excellent mode of dis- 
cussing our present social and political evils 
dramatically, and of descanting on them. 

After we had done our business, I called on a 
Scotch family and lured my companion in. He 
abhorred forcing himself on strangers — so I did 
not mention his name, merely observing, 

" As you said you wanted information about 
Italy, here is a friend of mine can give it you — 
for I cannot." 

The ladies — for there was no man there — 
were capital specimens of Scotchwomen, fresh 
from the land of cakes, — frank, fair, intelligent, 
and of course, pious. After a long and earnest 
talk we left them, but not without difficulty, so 
pressing were they for us to stop to dinner. 

When I next visited them, they were disap- 
6 



82 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

pointed at the absence of my companion ; and 
when I told them it was Shelley, the young and 
handsome mother clasped her hands, and ex- 
claimed, 
t " Shelley ! That bright-eyed youth ; — so 
gentle, so intelligent — so thoughtful for us. 
Oh, why did you not name him ? " 

" Because he thought you would have been 
shocked." 

" Shocked ! — why I would have knelt to him 
in penitence for having wronged him even in 
my thoughts. K he is riot pure and good — then 
there is no truth and sfoodness in this world. 
His looks reminded me of my own blessed baby, 
— so innocent — so full of love and sweetness." 

" So is the serpent that tempted Eve de- 
scribed," I said. 

" Oh, you wicked scoffer I " she continued, 

" But I know you love him. I shall have no 

peace of mind until you bring him here. You 

remember, sister, I said his young face had 

lines of care and sorrow on it — when he was 

showing us the road to Rome on the map and 

the sun shone on it ; — poor boy ! Oh, tell us 

about his wife, — is she worthy of him ? She 

must love him dearly — and so must all who 
know him." 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 83 

To palliate the warm-hearted lady's admira- 
tion of the Poet — as well as my own — I must 
observe, that all on knowing him sang the same 
song ; and as I have before observed, even 
Byron in his most moody and cynical vein, 
joined in the chorus, echoing my monotonous 
notes. The reason was, that after having heard 
or read the rancorous abuse heaped on Shelley 
by the mercenary literature of the day, — in 
which he was described as a monster more 
hideous than Caliban, — the revulsion of feeling 
on seeing the man was so great, that he seemed 
as gentle a spirit as Ariel. There never has 
been nor can be any true likeness of him. Des- 
demona says, " I saw Othello's visage in his 
mind," and Shelley's " visage " as well as his 
mind are to be seen in his works. 

When I was at Leghorn with Shelley, I drew 
him towards the docks, saying, 

" As we have a spare hour let's see if we 
can't put a girdle round about the earth in forty 
minutes." In these docks are living specimens 
of all the nationalities of the world ; thus we 
can go round it, and visit and examine any par- 
ticular nation we like, observing their peculiar 
habits, manners, dress, language, food, produc- 



84 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

tions, arts, and naval architecture ; for see how 
varied are the shapes, build, rigging, and deco- 
ration of the different vessels. There lies an 
English cutter, a French chasse maree, an 
American clipper, a Spanish tartan, an Aus- 
trian trabacolo, a Genoese felucca, a Sardinian 
zebeck, a Neapolitan brig, a Sicilian sparanza, 
a Dutch galleot, a Danish snow, a Kussian her- 
maphrodite, a Turkish sackalever, a Greek bom- 
bard. I don't see a Persian Dow, an Arab grab, 
or a Chinese junk ; but there are enough for 
our purpose and to spare. As you are writing 
a poem, ' Hellas,' about the modern Greeks, 
would it not be as well to take a look at them 
amidst all the din of the docks ? I hear their 
shrill nasal voices, and should like to know if 
you can trace in the language or lineaments of 
these Greeks of the nineteenth century, a. d., 
the faintest resemblance to the lofty and sub- 
lime spirits who lived in the fourth century, b. c. 
An English merchant who has dealings with 
them, told me he thought these modern Greeks 
were, if judged by their actions, a cross be- 
tween the Jews and gypsies ; — but here comes 
the Capitano Zarita ; I know him." 

So dragging Shelley with me I introduced 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 85 

him, and asking to see the vessel, we crossed 
the plank from the quay and stood on the deck 
of The San Spiridione in the midst of her chat- 
tering irascible crew. They took little heed of 
the skipper, for in these trading vessels each 
individual of the crew is part owner, and has 
some share in the cargo ; so they are all inter- 
ested in the speculation — having no wages. 
They squatted about the decks in small knots, 
shrieking, gesticulating, smoking, eating, and 
gambling like savages. 

" Does this realize your idea of Hellenism, 
Shelley ? " I said. ^// 

" No ! but it does of Hell," he replied. ^' 

The captain insisted on giving us pipes and 
coffee in his cabin, so I dragged Shelley down. 
Over the rudder-head facing us, there was a gilt 
box enshrining a flaming gaudy daub of a saint, 
with a lamp burning 'before it ; this was U 
Padre Santo Spiridione, the ship's godfather. 
The skipper crossed himself and squatted on 
the dirty divan. Shelley talked to him about 
the Greek revolution that was taking place, 
but from its interrupting trade the captain was 
opposed to it. 

" Come away ! " said Shelley. " There is not 



86 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

a drop of the old Hellenic blood here. These 
are not the men to rekindle the ancient Greek 
fire ; their souls are extinguished by traffic and 
superstition. Come away ! " — and away we 
went. 

" It is but a step," I said, " from these ruins of 
worn-out Greece to the New World, let 's board 
the American clipper." 

" I had rather not have any more of my hopes 
and illusions mocked by sad realities," said 
Shelley. 

" You must allow," I answered, " that grace- 
ful craft was designed by a man who had a 
poet's feeling for things beautiful; let's get a 
model and build a boat like her." 

The idea so pleased the Poet that he followed 
me on board her. The Americans are a social, 
free-and-easy people, accustomed to take their 
own way, and to readily yield the same privi- 
lege to all others, so that our coming on board, 
and examination of the vessel, fore and aft, 
were not considered as intrusion. The captain 
was on shore, so I talked to the mate, a smart 
specimen of a Yankee. When I commended 
her beauty, he said, 

" I do expect, now we have our new copper 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND EYRON. 87 

on, she has a look of the brass sarpent, she has 
as slick a run, and her bearings are just where 
they should be." 

I said we wished to build a boat after her 
model. 

" Then I calculate you must go to Baltimore 
or Boston to get one ; there is no one on this 
side the water can do the job. We have our 
freight all ready, and are homeward-bound ; we 
have elegant accommodation, and you will be 
across before your young friend's beard is ripe 
for a razor. Come down, and take an observa- 
tion of the state cabin." 

It was about seven and a half feet by five ; 
" plenty of room to live or die comfortably in," 
he observed, and then pressed us to have a 
chaw of real old Virginian cake, i. e, tobacco, 
and a cool drink of peach brandy. I made 
some observation to him about the Greek vessel 
we had visited. 

•' Crank as an eggshell," he said ; " too many 
sticks and top hamper, she looks like a bundle 
of chips going to hell to be burnt." 

I seduced Shelley into drinking a wine-glass 
of weak grog, the first and last he ever drank. 
The Yankee would not let us go until we 'had 



88 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

drunk, under the star-spangled banner, to the 
memory of Washington, and the prosperity of 
the American commonwealth. 

" As a warrior and statesman," said Shelley, 
"he was righteous in all he did, unlike all who 
lived before or since ; he never used his power 
but for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, 

' He fought, 
For truth and wisdom, foremost of the brave; 
Him glory's idle oflances dazzled not: 
'Tvvas his ambition, generous and great, 
A life to life's great end to consecrate,' " 

" Stranger," said the Yankee, " truer words 
were never spoken ; there is dry rot in all the 
main timbers of the Old World, and none of 
you will do any good till you are docked, re- 
fitted, and annexed to the New. You must log 
that song you sang; there ain't many Britishers 
that will say as much of the man that whipped 
them ; so just set these lines down in the log, or 
it won't go for nothing." 

Shelley wrote some verses in the book, but 
not those he had quoted ; and so we parted. 

It was now time to return to Pisa. I never 
lost an opportunity of thus giving the dreamy 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 89 

bard glimpses of rough life. He disliked it, but 
could not resist my importunity. He had seen 
no more of the working-day world than a girl at 
a boarding-schoolj and his habit of eternally 
brooding on his own thoughts, in solitude and 
silence, damaged his health of mind and body. 
Like many other over-sensitive people, he 
thought everybody shunned him, whereas it 
was he who stood aloof. To the few who 
sought his acquaintance, he was frank, cordial, 
and, if they appeared worthy, friendly in the 
extreme ; but he shrank like a maiden from 
making the first advances.- At the beginning 
of his literary life, he believed all authors pub- 
lished their opinions as he did his from a deep 
conviction of their truth and importance, after 
due investigation. When a new work appeared, 
on any subject that interested him, he would 
write to the authors expressing his opinion of 
their books, and giving his reasons for his judg- 
ment, always arguing logically, and not for 
display ; and, with his serene and imperturbable 
temper, variety of knowledge, tenacious mem- 
ory, command of language, or rather of all the 
languages of literature, he was a most subtle 



90 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

critic ; but, as authors are not the meekest or 
mildest of men, he occasionally met with rude 
rebuffs, and retired into his own shell. 

In this way he became acquainted with God- 
win, in early life ; and in his first work, ' Queen 
Mab,' or j-ather in the notes appended to that 
poem, the old philosophers influence on the 
beardless boy is strongly marked. For pub- 
lishing these notes Shelley was punished as 
the man is stated to have been who com- 
mitted the first murder : " every man's hand 
was against him." Southey, Wordsworth, Col- 
eridge, Keats, and others he had either written 
to, corresponded with, or personally known ; 
but in their literary guild he found little sym- 
pathy ; their enthusiasm had burnt out w^hilst 
Shelley's had waxed stronger. Old Roths- 
child's sage maxim perhaps influenced them, 
" Never connect yourself with an unlucky man." 
However that may be, all intercourse had long 
ceased between Shelley and any of the literary 
fraternity of the day, with the exception of 
Peacock, Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the Brothers 
Smith, of the ' Rejected Addresses.' 

I will now return to our drive home from 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 91 

visiting the ships in the docks of Leghorn. 
Shelley was in high glee, and full of fun, as 
he generally was after these " distractions," as 
he called them. The fact was his excessive 
mental labour impeded, if it did not paralyze, 
his bodily functions. When his mind was fix.ed 
on a subject, his mental powers were strained 
to the utmost. If not writing or sleeping, he 
was reading ; he read whilst eating, walking, or 
travelling — the last thing at night, and the first 
thing in the morning — not the ephemeral liter- 
ature of the day, which requires little or no 
thought, but the works of the old sages, meta- 
physicians, logicians, and philosophers, of the 
Grecian and Roman poets, and of modern 
scientific men, so that anything that could 
diversify or relax his overstrained brain was 
of the utmost benefit to him. Now he talked 
of nothing but ships, sailors, and the sea ; and, 
although he agreed with Johnson that a man 
who made a pun would pick a pocket, yet 
he made several in Greek, which he at least 
thought good, for he shrieked with laughter as 
he uttered them. Fearing his phil-Hellenism 
would end by making him serious, as it always 



92 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

did, I brought his mind back by repeating some 
lines of Sedley's beginning 

" Love still has something of the sea 
From whence his mother rose." 

During the rest of our drive we had nothing 
but sea yarns. He regretted having wasted his 
life in Greek and Latin, instead of learning the 
useful arts of swimming and sailoring. He 
resolved to have a good-sized boat forthwith. 
I proposed we should form a colony at the 
Gulf of Spezzia, and I said — " You get By- 
ron to join us, and with your family and 
the Williams's, and books, horses, and boats, 
undisturbed by the botherations of the world, 
we shall have all that reasonable people re- 
quire." 

This scheme enchanted him. " Well," I said, 
" propose this to Byron to-morrow." 

" No ! " he answered, " you must do that. 
Byron is always influenced by his last acquaint- 
ance. You are the last man, so do you pop 
the question." 

" I understand that feeling," I observed. 
" When well known neither men nor women 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 93 

realize our first conception of them, so we trans- 
fer our hopes to the new men or women who 
make a sign of sympathy, only to find them 
like those who have gone before, or worse." 
I quoted his own lines as exemplifying my 
meaning — 

" Where is the beauty, love, and truth we seek, 
But in our minds ! " 



9J: RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER X. 

First our pleasures die — and then 

Our hopes, and then our fears — and when 

These are dead, the debt is due. 

Dust claims dust — and we die too. 

Shelley. 

The following morning I told Byron our plan. 
Without any suggestion from me he eagerly 
volunteered to join us, and asked me to get a 
yacht built for him, and to look out for a house 
as near the sea as possible. I allowed some 
days to pass before I took any steps in order to 
see if his wayward mind would change. As he 
grew more urgent I wrote to an old naval Mend, 
Captain Roberts, then staying at Genoa, a man 
peculiarly fitted to execute the order, and re- 
quested him to send plans and estimates of an 
open boat for Shelley, and a large decked one 
for Byron. Shortly after, Williams and I rode 
along the coast to the Gulf of Spezzia. Shel- 
ley had no pride or vanity to provide for, yet we 
had the greatest difficulty in finding any house 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 95 

in which the humblest civilized family could 
exist. 

On the shores of this superb bay, only sur- 
passed in its natural beauty and capability by 
that of Naples, so effectually has tyranny par- 
alyzed the energies and enterprise of man, that 
the only indication of human habitation was a 
few most miserable fishing villages scattered 
along the margin of the bay. Near its centre, 
between the villages of Sant'Arenzo and Lerici, 
we came upon a lonely and abandoned building 
called the Villa Magni, though it looked more 
like a boat or bathing-house than a place to 
live in. It consisted of a terrace or gro md- 
floor unpaved, and used for storing boat-gear 
and fishing-tackle, and of a single story over it 
divided into a hall or saloon and four small 
rooms which had once been whitewashed ; there 
was one chimney for cooking. This place, we 
thought the Shelleys might put up with for the 
summer. The only good thing about it was a 
verandah facing the sea, and almost over it. 
So we sought the owner and made arrange- 
ments, dependent on Shelley's approval, for 
taking it for six months. As to finding a 
palazzo grand enough for a Milordo Inglese, 



98 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

within a reasonable distance of the bay, it was 
out of the question. 

Williams returned to Pisa ; I rode on to Ge- 
noa, and settled with Captain Roberts about 
building the boats. He had already, with his 
usual activity, obtained permission to build 
them in the government dock-yards, and had 
his plans and estimates made out. I need 
hardly say that though the Captain was a 
great arithmetician, this estiniate, like all the 
estimates as to time and cost that were ever 
made, was a mere delusion, which made Byron 
wroth, but did not ruffle Shelley's serenity. 

On returning to Pisa I found the two Poets 
going through the same routine of habits they 
had adopted before my departure ; the one 
getting out of bed after noon, dawdling about 
until two or three, following the same road on 
horseback, stopping at the same Podere, firing 
his pop-guns, and retracing his steps at the 
same slow pace ; — his frugal dinner followed 
by his accustomed visit to an Italian family, 
and then — the midnight lamp, and the immor- 
tal verses. 

The other was up at six or seven, reading 
Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza, v^ith the accom- 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 97 

paniment of a hunch of dry bread ; then he 
joined Williams in a sail on the Arno, in a flat- 
bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from thence 
he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the- 
way place. When the birds went to roost he 
returned home, and talked and read until 
midnight. The monotony of this life was only 
broken at long intervals by the arrival of some 
old acquaintances of Byron's : Rogers, Hob- 
house, Moore, Scott — not Sir Walter, — and 
these visits were brief. John Murray, the pub- 
lisher, sent out new books, and wrote amusing 
gossiping letters, as did Tom Moore and others. 
These we were generally allowed to read, or 
hear read, Byron archly observing, " My private 
and confidential letters are better known than 
any of my published works." 

Shelley's boyish eagerness to possess the new 
toy, from which he anticipated never-failing 
pleasure in gliding over the azure seas, under 
the cloudless skies of an Italian summer, was 
pleasant to behold. His comrade Williams was 
inspired by the same spirit. We used to ^draw 
plans on the sands of the Arno of the exact 
dimensions of the boat, dividing her into com- 
partments (the forepart was decked for stow- 

7 



98 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

age), and then, squatting down within the lines, 
I marked off the imaginary cabin. With a real 
chart of the Mediterranean spread out before 
them, and with faces as grave and anxious as 
those of Columbus and his companions, they 
held councils as to the islands to be visited, 
coasts explored, courses steered, the amount of 
armament, stores, Avater, and provisions which 
would be necessary. Then we would narrate 
instances of the daring of the old navigators, as 
when Diaz discovered the Cape of Good Hope 
in 1446, with two vessels each of fifty tons 
burthen ; or when Drake went round the world, 
one of his craft being only thirty tons ; and of 
the extraordinary runs and enterprises accom- 
plished in open boats of equal or less tonnage, 
than the one we were building from the earliest 
times to those of Commodore Bligh. Byron, 
with the smile of a Mephistophiles standing 
by, asked me the amount of salvage we, the 
salvors, should be entitled to in the probable 
event of our picking up and towing Shelley's 
water-logged craft into port. 

As the world spun round, the sandy plains of 
Pisa became too hot to be agreeable, and the 
Shelleys, longing for the sea breezes, departed 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 99 

to their new abode. Byron could not muster 
energy enough to break through his dawdling 
habits, SO he lingered on under the fair plea of 
seeing the Leigh Hunts settled in his ground- 
floor, which was prepared for them. I rode on 
to Genoa to hasten the completion and despatch 
of the long-promised boat-flotilla. I found Cap- 
tain Roberts had nearly finished Shelley's boat. 
Williams had brought with him, on leaving 
England, the section of a boat as a model to 
build from, designed by a naval officer, and the 
two friends had so often sat contemplating this 
toy, believing it to be a marvel of nautical 
architecture, that nothing would satisfy them 
but that their craft should be built exactly on 
the same lines. Roberts, and the builder at 
Genoa, not approving, protested against it. 
You might as well have attempted to per- 
suade a young man after a season of boating, 
or hunting, that he was not a thorough seaman 
and sportsman ; or a youngster flushed with 
honours from a university that he was not the 
wisest of men. Williams was on ordinary occa- 
sions as humble-minded as Shelley, but having 
been two or three years in the navy, and then 
in the cavalry, he thought there was no vanity 



100 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

in his believing that he was as good a judge of 
a boat or horse as any man. In these small 
conceits we are all fools at the beginning of 
life, until time, with his sledge-hammer, has let 
the daylight into our brain-boxes ; so the boat 
was built according to his cherished model. 
When it was finished, it took two tons of iron 
ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and 
then she was very crank in a breeze, though 
not deficient in beam. She was fast, strongly 
built, and Torbay rigged. I despatched her un- 
der charge of two steady seamen, and a smart 
sailor lad, aged eighteen, named Charles Vivian. 
Shelley sent back the two sailors and only re- 
tained the boy; they told me on their return 
to Genoa, that they had been out in a rough 
night, that she was a ticklish boat to manage, 
but had sailed and worked well, and with two 
good seamen she would do very well ; and that 
they had cautioned the gents accordingly. I 
shortly after received the following letter from 
Shelley : 

Lerici, May 16, 1822. 

My Dear Trelawny, 
The * Don Juan ' is arrived, and nothing can 
exceed the admiration she has excited ; for we 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 101 

must suppose the name to have been given her 
during the equivocation of sex which her god- 
father suffered in the harem. Williams declares 
her to be perfect, and I participate in his enthu- 
siasm, inasmuch as would be decent in a lands- 
man. We have been out now several days, 
although we have sought in vain for an oppor- 
tunity of trying her against the feluccas or other 
large craft in the bay ; she passes the small ones 
as a comet might pass the dullest planet of the 
heavens. When do you expect to be here in 
the * Bolivar ? ' If Roberts's 501. grow into a 
500L, and his ten days into months, I suppose 
I may expect that I am considerably in your 
debt, and that you will not be round here until 
the middle of the summer. I hope that I shall 
be mistaken in the last of these conclusions ; 
as to the former, whatever may be the result, I 
have little reason and less inclination to com- 
plain of my bargain. I wish you could ex- 
press from me to Roberts, how excessively I am 
obliged to him for the time and trouble he has 
expended for my advantage, and which I wish 
could be as easily repaid as the money which 
I owe him, and which I wait your orders for 
remitting. 



102 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

I have only heard from Lord Byron once, and 
solely upon that subject. Tita is with me, and 
I suppose will go with you in the schooner to 
Leghorn. We are very impatient to see you, 
and although we cannot hope that you will stay 
long on your first visit, we count upon you for 
the latter part of the summer, as soon as the 
novelty of Leghorn is blunted. Mary desires 
her best regards to you, and unites with me in a 
sincere wish to renew an intimacy from which 
we have already experienced so much pleasure. 
Believe me, my dear Trelawny, 

Your very sincere friend, 

P. B. Shelley. 

Lerici, June 18, 1822. 

My dear Trelawny, 
I have written to Guelhard, to pay you 154 
Tuscan crowns, the amount of the balance 
against me according to Roberts's calculation, 
which I keep for your satisfaction, deducting 
sixty, which I paid the aubergiste at Pisa', in all 
214. We saw you about eight miles in the 
offing this morning; but the abatement of the 
breeze leaves us little hope that you can have 
made Leghorn this evening. Pray write us a 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 103 

full, true, and particular account of your pro- 
ceedings, &c. — How Lord Byron likes the ves- 
sel ; what are your arrangements and intentions . 
for the summer; and when we may expect to 
see vou or him in this region again ; and espec- 
ially whether there is any news of Hunt. 

Roberts and Williams are very busy in refit- 
ting the * Don Juan ; ' they seem determined 
that she shall enter Leghorn in style. I am no 
great judge of these matters ; but am exces- 
sively obliged to the former, and delighted that 
the latter should find amusement, like the spar- 
row, in educating the cuckoo's young. 

You, of course, enter into society at Leghorn ; 
should you meet with any scientific person, ca- 
pable of preparing the Prussic Acid, or essential 
oil of bitter almonds, I should regard it as a great 
kindness if you could procure me a small quan- 
tity. It requires the greatest caution in prepa- 
ration, and ought to be highly concentrated ; I 
would give any price for this medicine ; you 
remember we talked of it the other night, and 
we both expressed a wish to possess it ; my 
wish was serious, and sprung from the desire of 
avoiding needless suffering. I need not tell you 
I have no intention of suicide at present, but I 



104 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

confess it would be a comfort to me to hold in 
my possession that golden key to the chamber 
of perpetual rest. The Prussic Acid is used in 
medicine in infinitely minute doses ; but that 
preparation is weak, and has not the concentra- 
tion necessary to medicine all ills infallibly. A 
single drop, even less, is a dose, and it acts by 
paralysis. 

I am curious to hear of this publication about 
Lord Byron and the Pisa circle. I hope it will 
not annoy him, as to me I am supremely indif- 
ferent. If you have not shown the letter I sent 
you, don't, until Hunt's arrival, when we shall 
certainly meet. Your very sincere friend, 

P. B. Shelley. 

Mary is better, though still excessively weak. 

Not long after, I followed in Byron's boat, the 
' Bolivar ' schooner. There was no fault to find 
with her, Roberts and the builder had fashioned 
her after their own fancy, and she was both fast 
and safe. I manned her with five able seamen, 
four Genoese and one Englishman. I put into 
the Gulf of Spezzia, and found Shelley in ec- 
stasy with his boat, and Williams as touchy 
about her reputation as if she had been his wife. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AXD BYROX. 105 

They were hardly ever out of her, and talked of 
the Mediterranean as a lake too confined and 
tranquil to exhibit her sea-going excellence. 
They longed to be on the broad Atlantic, scud- 
ding under bare poles in a heavy sou'wester, 
with plenty of sea room. I went out for a sail 
in Shelley's boat to see how they would man- 
age her. It was great fun to witness Williams 
teaching the Poet how to steer, and other points 
of seamanship. As usual, Shelley had a book 
in hand, saying he could read and steer at the 
same ,time, as one was mental, the other me- 
chanical. 

" Luff! " said Williams. 

Shelley put the helm the wrong way. Wil- 
liams corrected him. 

" Do you see those two white objects a-head ? 
keep them in a line, the wind is heading us." 
Then turning to me, he said : " Lend me a hand 
to haul in the main-sheet, and I will show you 
how close she can lay to the wind to work off a 
lee-shore." 

" No," I answered ; " I am a passenger, and 
won't touch a rope." 

" Luff! " said Williams, as the boat was yaw- 
ing about. " Shelley, you can't steer, you have 



106 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

got her in the wind's eye ; give me the tiller, 
and you attend the main-sheet. Ready about!" 
said Williams. " Helms down — let go the fore- 
sheet — see how she spins round on her heel — 
is not she a beauty? Now, Shelley, let go 
the main-sheet, and boy, haul aft the jib- 
sheet ! " 

The main-sheet was jammed, and the boat 
unmanageable, or as sailors express it, in irons ; 
when the two had cleared it, Shelley's hat was 
knocked overboard, and he would probably have 
followed, if I had not held him. He was so un- 
commonly awkward, that when they had things 
ship-shape, Williams, somewhat scandalized at 
the lubberly manoeuvre, blew up the Poet for his 
neglect and inattention to orders. Shelley was, 
however, so happy and in such high glee, and 
the nautical terms so tickled his fancy, that he 
even put his beloved ' Plato ' in his pocket, and 
gave his mind up to fun and frolic. 

" You will do no good with Shelley," I said, 
" until you heave his books and papers over- 
board ; shear the wisps of hair that hang over 
his eyes ; and plunge his arms up to the elbows 
in a tar-bucket. And you, captain, will have no 
authority, until you dowse your frock coat and 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 107 

cavalry boots. You see I am stripped for a 
swim, so please, whilst I am on board, to keep 
within swimming distance of the land." 

The boy was quick and handy, and used to 
boats. Williams was not as deficient as I anti- 
cipated, but over-anxious and wanted practice, 
which alone makes a man prompt in emergency. 
Shelley was intent on catching images from the 
ever-changing sea and sky, he heeded not the 
boat. On my suggesting the addition to their 
crew of a Genoese sailor accustomed to the 
coast — such as I had on board the ' Bolivar,' — 
Williams, thinking I undervalued his efficiency 
as a seaman, was scandalized — " as if we three 
seasoned salts were not enough to manage an 
open boat, when lubberly sloops and cutters of 
fifty or sixty tons were worked by as few men 
on the rough seas and iron-bound coast of Scot- 
land!'* 

" Yes," I answered, " but what a difference be- 
tween those sea-lions and you and our water- 
poet ! A decked cutter besides, or even a frigate 
is easier handled in a gale or squall, and out- 
and-out safer to be on board of than an open 
boat. If we had been in a squall to-day with 
the main-sheet jammed, and the tiller put star- 



108 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

board instead of port, we should have had to 
swim for it." 

" Not I ; I should have gone down with the 
rest of the pigs in the bottom of the boat," said 
Shelley, meaning the iron pig-ballast. 

When I took my departure for Leghorn on 
board the ' Bolivar,' they accompanied me out 
of the bay, and then we parted. I arrived at 
Leghorn the same night. I found my Lord 
Inglese had at last mustered sufficient energy to 
move from Pisa to Monte Nero, near Leghorn ; 
I condoled with him on the change, for his new 
flimsy-built villa — not unlike the suburban ver- 
andahed cockney boxes on the Thames — was 
ten times hotter than the old solid palace he had 
left, with its cool marble halls, and arched aiid 
lofty floors that defied the sun. He was satis- 
fied with his boat, but by no means with its 
cost ; he took little interest in her, and I could 
not induce him to take a cruise ; he always had 
some excuse. The first time he came on board, 
he said in answer to something I pointed out in 
the rigging : — 

" People think I must be a bit of a sailor from 
my writings. All the sea-terms I use are from 
authority, and they cost me time, toil, and trouble 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 109 

to look them out ; but you will find me a land- 
lubber. I hardly know the stem from the stern, 
and don't know the name or use of a single rope 
or sail ; I know the deep sea is blue, and not 
green, as that greenhorn Shakspeare always 
calls it." 

This was literally true ; in regard to Byron, 
he neither knew nor cared to know, nor ever 
asked a question (excepting when writing) about 
sea-terms or sea-life. 

Towards the end of June, 1822, the long ex- 
pected family of the Hunts arrived by sea from 
England. 

Byron observed, " You will find Leigh Hunt 
a gentleman in dress and address." 

I found him that, and something more ; and 
with a quaint fancy and cultivated mind. He 
was in high spirits, and disposed to be pleased 
with others. His anticipated literary projects, in 
conjunction with Byron and Shelley were a 
source of great pleasure to him — so was the 
land of beauty and song. He had come to it 
as to a new home, in which as the immortal 
Robins would have said: " You will find no 
nuisance but the litter of the rose-leaves and the 
noise of the nightingales." The pleasure that 



110 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

surpassed all the rest, was the anticipation 
of seeing speedily his friend Shelley. But, 
alas ! all those things which seemed so cer- 
tain — 

" Those lugirHnof fiends 
That keep the word of promise to our ear, 
And break it to our hope," 

so kept — and so broke — it with Leigh Hunt. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. Ill 



CHAPTER XI. 



What is life, what is death, 

What are avc? that when the ship sinks 

We no longei" may be. 

Shelley. 



I Shelley, with his friend Williams, soon 
came in their boat, scudding into the harbom' 
of Leghorn. They went with the Hunts to 
Pisa, and established them in Lord Byron's 
palace, Shelley having furnished a floor there for 
them. In a few 'days Shelley returned to Leg- 
horn, and found Williams eager to be off. We 
had a sail outside the port in the two boats. 
Shelley was in a mournful mood; his mind 
depressed by a recent interview with Byron. 

Byron, at first, had been more eager than 
Shelley for Leigh Hunt's arrival in Italy to edit 
and contribute to the proposed new Review, and 
so continued until his English correspondents 
had worked on his fears. They did not oppose. 



112 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

for they knew his temper too well, but artfully 
insinuated that he was jeopardizing his fame 
and fortune, &c., &c., &c. Shelley found Byron 
so irritable, so shuffling and equivocating, whilst 
talking with him on the fulfilment of his 
promises with regard to Leigh Hunt, — that, but 
for imperilling Hunt's prospects, Shelley's in- 
tercourse with Byron would then have abruptly 
terminated ; it was doomed to be their last 
meeting. 

On Saturday, the 6th, Williams wrote the 
following letter to his wife at the Villa Magni: 

" I HAVE just left the quay, my dearest girl, 
and the wind blows right across to Spezzia, 
which adds to the vexation I feel at being un- 
able to leave this place. For my own part, I 
should have been with you in all probability on 
Wednesday evening, but I have been kept day 
after day, waiting for Shelley's definitive ar- 
rangements with Lord B. relative to poor Hunt, 
whom, in my opinion, he has treated vilely. A 
letter from Mary, of the most gloomy kind, 
reached S. yesterday, and this mood of hers 
aggravated my uneasiness to see you ; for I 
am proud, dear girl, beyond words to express. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 113 

in the conviction, that wherever we may be 
together you could be cheerful and contented. 

" Would I could take the present gale by the 
wings and reach you to-night; hard as it blows, 
I would venture across for such a reward. How- 
ever, to-morrow something decisive shall take 
place ; and if I am detained, I shall depart in 
a feluca, and leave the boat to be brought round 
in company with Trelawny in the ^ Bolivar.' 
He talks of visiting Spezzia again in a few 
days. I am tired to death of waiting — this is 
our longest separation, and seems a year to me. 
Absence alone is enough to make me anxious, 
and indeed, unhappy ; but I think if I had left 
you in our own house in solitude, I should feel 
it less than I do now. — What can I do ? Poor 
S. desires that I should return to you, but I 
know secretly wishes me not to leave him in 
the lurch. He too, by his manner, is as anxious 
to see you almost as I could be, but the interests 
of poor H. keep him here ; — in fact, with Lord 
B. it appears they cannot do any thing, — who 
actually said as much as that he did not wish 
(?) his name to be attached to the work, and of 
course to theirs. 

" In Lord Byron's family all is confusion ; — 
8 



114 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

the cut-throats he is so desirous to have about 
him, have involved him in a second row ; and 
although the present banishment of the Gambas 
from Tuscany is attributed to the first affair of 
the dragoon, the continued disturbances among 
his and their servants is, I am sure, the principal 
cause for its being carried into immediate effect. 
Four days (commencing from the day of our 
arrival at Leghorn) were only given them to find 
another retreat ; and as Lord B. considers this a 
personal, though tacit attack upon himself, he 
chooses to follow their fortunes in another 
country. Genoa was first selected, — of that 
government they could have no hope ; — Geneva 
was then proposed, and this proved as bad if not 
worse. Lucca is now the choice, and Trelawriy 
was despatched last night to feel their way with 
the governor, to whom he carried letters. All 
this time Hunt is shuffled off from day to day, 
and now, heaven knows, when or how it will end. 
" Lord B.'s reception of Mrs. H. was — as S. 
tells me — most shameful. She came into his 
house sick and exhausted, and he scarcely 
deigned to notice her ; was silent, and scarcely 
bowed. This conduct cut H. to the soul ; but 
the way in which he received our friend Roberts, 



LAST BAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 115 

at Dunn's door, shall be described when we 
meet: — it must be acted. How I long to see 
you; I had written when, but I will make no 
promises, for I too well know how distressing it 
is to both of us to break them. Tuesday even- 
ing at furthest, unless kept by the weather, I 
will say, ' Oh, Jane I how fervently I press you 
and our little ones to my heart.' 

" Adieu ! — Take body and soul ; for you are 
at once my heaven and earth ; — that is all I ask 
of both. 

« E. Elk. W— . 

" S. is at Pisa, and will write to-night to me." 

The last entry in Williams's Journal is dated 
July 4, 1822, Leghorn. 

" Processions of priests and religiosi have been 
for several days past praying for rain ; but the 
gods are either angry, or nature too powerful." 

The affair of the dragoon alluded to in Wil- 
liams's letter, as connected with the Gambas 
was this : As Byron and his companions were 
returning to Pisa on horseback, the road being 
blocked up by the party, — a serjeant-major on 
duty in their rear trotted his horse through the 



116 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

cavalcade. One of the awkward literary squad, 
— a rcHolute bore, f>iit timid rider, — was nearly 
spill, from hin nag hhying. To divf^rt the jeers 
from his own f>ad riding, he a[)pealed patheti- 
cally to Byron, «aying : — 

" Shall we endure this man's insolence ?" 
Byron said : " No, we will luring him to an 
account ; " and instantly galloped after the dra- 
goon intxj Pisa, his party following. The guard 
at the gate turrK^l out with drawn swords, but 
could not stop them. Som(i of the servants of 
Byron and the Gambas were idling on the steps 
of his palace ; getting a glimpse of the row, one 
of them armed himself with a stable-fork, rushed 
at the dragoon as he passed Byron's palace, and 
wounded him sevenily in the sid(;. This scene 
was acted in broad daylight on the Lung' Arno, 
the most public place; in the city, scores of people 
looking on I yet tin; police, with thciir host of 
H[)ies and backcjd by tin; [>ow(;r of a d(!.spotic 
government, c(juld never ascertain who struck 
the blow. 

Not liking to meddle with the Poet, lliey im- 
prisoncid two (jf liis servants, and exiled the 
family of C(jinit (Jamba. Jiyron ehosti to 
follow them. Such is the hatred of the Italians 



LAt?T 1>AY8 OV SHELLEY A^'D BYRON. 117 

to thrir rulors niul nil wlu^ Imvi* nnthovity i>V(M' 
iluMn, \\va\ \hc bliiul bey-i^^sirs at thr cornors of 
tlio stnH'is, — no t>iluM*s an^ iuMMuiittMl to Im^l;- in 
Tuscany, — hoariiig that th(^ l^'ni;lisli \\(^f(^ wiili- 
oiil arms, sidltMl np io soni<* of IhtMn, adroitly 
putting into tluMr hands forniidablo stilettos, 
which they had concealed in the sleeves of their 
ragged gaberdines. 

8hell(*y wrote me the following note about the 
dracoon. 

My dear T. 
Gamba is with m(\ anil wt^ are drawing np a 
paper demandtul o( ns by tiu^ police. INFary tells 
me that you hav«^ an accovmt from liord Byron 
oi' iUv all'air, and we wish to see it before ours 
is concluded. The man is severely wounded in 
the side, and his life is supposed io be in danger 
from the weapon having grazed the livta*. It 
were as well if yon (•t>nld co\uv here, as we shall 
decide on no statement without you. 

Ever yours truly, 

8ni',i,i.KY. 

INlrs. Shelley, writing an acoount of the row, 
Jiays : 



118 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

" Madame G. and I happened to be in the 
carriage, ten paces behind, and saw the whole. 
TaafFe kept at a safe distance during the fray, 
but fearing the consequence, he wrote such a 
report that Lord Byron quarrelled with him ; 
and what between insolence and abject humility 
he has kept himself in hot water, when, in fact, 
he had nothing to fear." 

On Monday, the 8th of July, 1822, 1 went 
with Shelley to his bankers, and then to a store. 
It was past one p. m. when we went on board 
our respective boats, — Shelley and Williams to 
return to their home in the Gulf of Spezzia ; I in 
the ' Bolivar,' to accompany them into the offing. 
When we were under weigh, the guard-boat 
boarded us to overhaul our papers. I had not 
got my port clearance, the captain of the port 
having refused to give it to the mate, as I had 
often gone out without. The officer of the 
Health Office consequently threatened me with 
forty days' quarantine. It was hopeless to think 
of detaining my friends. Williams had been for 
days fretting and fuming to be off; they had no 
time to spare, it was past two o'clock, and there 
was very little wind. 

Sullenly and reluctantly I re-anchored, furled 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BY'RON. 119 

my sails, and with a ship's glass watched the 
progress of my friends' boat. My Genoese mate 
observed, — " They should have sailed this morn- 
ing at three or four, a. m., instead of three, p. m. 
They are standing too much in shore ; the cur- 
rent will set them there." 

I said, " They will soon have the land-breeze." 

" May-be," continued the mate, " she will soon 
have too much breeze ; that gaff top-sail is foolish 
in a boat with no deck and no sailor on board." 
Then pointing to the S. W., " Look at those black 
lines and the dirty rags hanging on them out of 
the sky — they are a warning ; look at the smoke 
on the water ; the devil is brewing mischief." 

There was a sea-fog, in which Shelley's boat 
was soon after enveloped, and we saw nothing 
more of her. 

Although the sun was obscured by mists, it 
was oppressively sultry. There was not a breath 
of air in the harbour. The heaviness of the 
atmosphere and an unwonted stillness benumbed 
my senses. I went down into the cabin and 
sank into a slumber. I was roused up by a 
noise over-head and went on deck. The men 
were getting up a chain cable to let go another 
anchor. There was a general stir amongst the 



120 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

shipping; shifting berths, getting down yards 
and masts, veering out cables, hauling in of 
hawsers, letting go anchors, hailing from the 
ships and quays, boats sculling rapidly to and 
fro. It was almost dark, although only half- 
past six o'clock. The sea was of the colour, 
and looked as solid and smooth as a sheet of 
lead, and covered with an oily scum. Gasts of 
wind swept over without ruffling it, and big 
drops of rain fell on its surface, rebounding, as 
if they could not penetrate it. There was a com- 
motion in the air, made up of many threatening 
sounds, coming upon us from the sea. Fishing- 
craft and coasting-vessels under bare poles 
rushed by us in shoals, running foul of the ships 
in the harbour. As yet the din and hubbub was 
that made by men, but their shrill pipings were 
suddenly silenced by the crashing voice of a 
thunder squall that burst right over oar heads. 
For some time no other sounds were to be heard 
than the thunder, wind, and rain. When the 
fury of the storm, which did not last for more 
than twenty minutes, had abated, and the hori- 
zon was in some degree cleared, I looked to 
seaward anxiously, in the hope of descrying 
Shelley's boat, amongst the many small craft 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 121 

scattered about. I watched every speck that 
loomed on the horizon, thinking that they would 
have borne up on their return to the port, as all 
the other boats that had gone out in the same 
direction had done. 

I sent our Genoese mate on board some of the 
returning craft to make inquiries, but they all pro- 
fessed not to have seen the English boat. So 
remorselessly are the quarantine laws enforced 
in Italy, that, when at sea, if you render assist- 
ance to a vessel in distress, or rescue a drowning 
stranger, on returning to port you are condemned 
to a long and rigorous quarantine of fourteen or 
more days. The consequence is, should one 
vessel see another in peril, or even run it down 
by accident, she hastens on her course, and by 
general accord, not a word is said or reported on 
the subject. But to resume my tale. I did not 
leave the ' Bolivar ' until dark. During the night 
it was gusty and showery, and the lightning 
flashed along the coast; at daylight I returned 
on board, and resumed my examinations of the 
crews of the various boats which had returned 
to the port during the night. They either knew 
nothing, or would say nothing. My Genoese, 
with the quick eye of a sailor, pointed out, on 



122 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

board a fishing-boat, an English-made oar, that 
he thought he had seen in Shelley's boat, but 
the entire crew swore by all the saints in the 
calendar that this was not so. Another day 
was passed in horrid suspense. On the morn- 
ing of the third day I rode to Pisa. Byron had 
returned to the Lanfranchi Palace. I hoped to 
find a letter from the Villa Magni ; there was 
none. I told my fears to Hunt, and then went 
upstairs to Byron. When I told him, his lip 
quivered, and his voice faltered as he questioned 
me. I sent a courier to Leghorn to despatch 
the ' Bolivar,' to cruise along the coast, whilst 
I mounted my horse and rode in the same 
direction. I also despatched a courier along 
the coast to go as far as Nice. On my arrival 
at Via Reggio, I heard that a punt, a water- 
keg, and some bottles had been found on the 
beach. These things I recognized as having 
been in Shelley's boat when he left Leghorn. 
Nothing more was found for seven or eight 
days, during which time of painful suspense, I 
patrolled the coast with the coast-guard, stimu- 
lating them to keep a good look-out by the 
proEpise of a reward. It was not until many 
days after this that my worst fears were con- 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 123 

firmed. Two bodies were found on the shore, 
— one near Via Reggio, which I went and ex- 
amined. The face and hands, and parts of the 
body not protected by the dress, were fleshless. 
The tall, slight figure, the jacket, the volume of 
Sophocles in one pocket, and Keats's poems in 
the other, doubled back, as if the reader, in the 
act of reading, had hastily thrust it away, were 
all too familiar to me to leave a doubt on my 
mind that this mutilated corpse was any other 
than Shelley's. The other body was washed on 
shore three miles distant from Shelley's, near 
the tower of Migliarino, at the Bocca Lericcio. 
I went there at once. This corpse was much 
more mutilated ; it had no other covering than, 
— ^the shreds of a shirt, and that partly drawn 
over the head, as if the wearer had been in 
the act of taking it off", — a black silk hand- 
kerchief, tied sailor-fashion round the neck, — 
socks, — and one boot, indicating also that he 
had attempted to strip. The flesh, sinews, and 
muscles hung about in rags, like the shirt, ex- 
posing the ribs and bones. I had brought with 
me from Shelley's house a boot of Williams's, 
and this exactly matched the one the corpse had 
on. That, and the handkerchief, satisfied me 



124 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

that it was the body of Shelley's comrade. 
Williams was the only one of the three who 
could swim, and it is probable he was the last 
survivor. It is likewise possible, as he had a 
watch and money, and was better dressed than 
the others, that his body might have been plun- 
dered when found. Shelley always declared 
that in case of wreck he would vanish instantly, 
and not imperil valuable lives by permitting 
others to aid in saving his, which he looked 
upon as valueless. It was not until three weeks 
after the wreck of the boat that a third body 
was found — four miles from the other two. 
This I concluded to be that of the sailor boy, 
Charles Vivian, although it was a mere skele- 
ton, and impossible to be identified. It was 
buried in the sand, above the reach of the 
waves. I mounted my horse, and rode to the 
Gulf of Spezzia, put up my horse, and walked 
until I caught sight of the lone house on the 
sea-shore in which Shelley and Williams had 
dwelt, and where their widows still lived. 
Hitherto in my frequent visits — in the absence 
of direct evidence to the contrary, I had buoyed 
up their spirits by maintaining that it was not 
impossible but that the friends still lived ; now 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 125 

I had to extinguish the last hope of these for- 
lorn women. I had ridden fast, to prevent any 
ruder messenger from bursting in upon them. 
As I stood on the threshold of their house, the 
bearer, or rather confirmer, of news which would 
rack every fibre of their quivering frames to the 
utmost, I paused, and, looking at the sea, my 
memory reverted to our joyous parting only a 
few days before. 

The two families, then, had all been in the 
verandah, overhanging a sea so clear and calm, 
that every star was reflected on the water, as if 
it had been a mirror ; the young mothers sing- 
ing some merry tune, with the accompaniment 
of a guitar. Shelley's shrill laugh — I heard it 
still — rang in my ears, with Williams's friendly 
hail, the general buona notte of all the joyous 
party, and the earnest entreaty to- me to return 
as soon as possible, and not to forget the com- 
missions they had severally given me. I was 
in a small boat beneath them, slowly rowing 
myself on board the ' Bolivar,' at anchor in the 
bay, loath to part from what I verily believed to 
have been at that time the most united, and 
happiest, set of human beings in the whole 
world. And now by the blow of an idle puff of 



126 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

wind the scene was changed. Such is human 
happines?. 

My reverie was broken by a shriek from the 
nurse Caterina, as, crossing the hall, she saw 
me in the doorway. After asking her a few 
questions, I went up the stairs, and, unan- 
nounced, entered the room. I neither spoke, 
nor did they question me. Mrs. Shelley's large 
grey eyes were fixed on my face. I turned 
away. Unable to bear this horrid silence, with 
a convulsive effort she exclaimed — 

" Is there no hope ? " 

I did not answer, but left the room, and sent 
the servant, with the children to them. The 
next day I prevailed on them to return with 
me to Pisa. The misery of that night and the 
journey of the next day, and of many days and 
nights that followed, I can neither describe nor 
forget. It was ultimately determined by those 
most interested, that Shelley's remains should 
be removed from where they lay, and conveyed 
to Rome, to be interred near the bodies of his 
child, and of his friend Keats, with a suitable 
monument, and that Williams's remains should 
be taken to England. To do this, in their then 
far advanced state of decomposition, and to 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 127 

obviate the obstacles offered by the quarantine 
laws, the ancient custom of burning and reduc- 
ing the body to ashes was suggested. I wrote 
to our minister at Florence, Dawkins, on the 
subject, and solicited his friendly intercession 
with the Lucchese and Florentine governments, 
that I might be furnished with authority to 
accomplish our purpose. 

The following was his answer : — 

Dear Sir, 

An order was sent yesterday from hence to 
the Governor of Via Reggio, to deliver up the 
remains of Mr. Shelley to you, or any person 
empowered by you to receive them. 

I said they were to be removed to Leghorn 
for interment, but that need not bind you. If 
they go by sea, the governor will give you the 
papers necessary to insure their admittance 
elsewhere. If they travel by land, they must 
be accompanied by a guard as far as the fron- 
tier, — a precaution always taken to prevent the 
possibility of infection. Quicklime has been 
thrown into the graves, as is usual in similar 
cases. 

With respect to the removal of the other 



128 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

corpse, I can tell you nothing till I hear from 
Florence. I applied for the order as soon as 
I received your letter, and I expect an answer 
to my letter by to-morrow's post. 

I am very sensible of Lord Byron's kindness, 
and should have called upon him when I passed 
through Pisa, had he been anybody but Lotd 
Byron. Do not mention trouble ; I am here to 
take as much as my countrymen think proper 
to give me ; and all I ask in return is fair play 
and good humour, which I am sure I shall 
always find in the S. S. S. 

Believe me, dear sir. 

Yours very faithfully, 

W. Dawkins. 

Such were his subsequent influence and 
energy, that he ultimately overcame all the ob- 
stacles and repugnance of the Italians to sanc- 
tion such an unprecedented proceeding in their 
territories. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 129 



CHAPTER XII. 



All things that we love and cherish, 
Like ourselves, must fade and perish; 
Such is our rude mortal lot, 
Love itself would, did they not, 

Shfxley. 



I GOT a furnace made at Leghorn, of iron- 
bars and strong sheet-iron, supported on a 
stand, and laid in a stock of fuel, and such 
things as were said to be used by Shelley's 
much loved Hellenes on their funeral pyres. 

On the 13th of August, 1822, I went on 
board the ' Bolivar,' with an English acquaint- 
ance, having written to Byron and Hunt to say 
I would send them word when everything was 
ready, as they wished to be present. I had pre- 
viously engaged two large feluccas, with drags 
and tackling, to go before, and endeavour to find 
the place where Shelley's boat had foundered ; 
the captain of one of the feluccas having as- 
serted that he was out in the fatal squall, and 
had seen Shelley's boat go down off Via Reggio, 
9 



130 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

with all sail set. With light and fitful breezes 
we were eleven hours reaching our destination— 
the tower of Migliarino, at the Bocca Lericcio, 
in the Tuscan States. There was a village there, 
and about two miles from that place Williams 
was buried. So I anchored, landed, called on 
the officer in command, a major, and told him 
my object in coming, of which he was already- 
apprised by his own government. He assured 
me I should have every aid from him. As it 
was too late in the day to commence operations, 
we went to the only inn in the place, and I wrote 
to Byron to be with us next day at noon. The 
major sent my letter to Pisa by a dragoon, and 
made arrangements for the next day. In the 
morning he was with us early, and gave me a 
note from Byron, to say he would join us as 
near noon as he could. At ten we went on board 
the commandant's boat, with a squad of soldiers 
in working dresses, armed with mattocks and 
spades, an oflicer of the quarantine service, and 
some of his crew. They had their peculiar tools, 
so fashioned as to do their work without coming 
into personal contact with things that might be 
infectious — long handled tongs, nippers, poles 
with iron hooks and spikes, and divers others 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYROX. 131 

that gave one a lively idea of the implements 
of torture devised by the holy inquisitors. Thus 
freighted, we started, my own boat following 
with the furnace, and the things I had brought 
from Leghorn. We pulled along the shore for 
some distance, and landed at a line of strong 
posts and railings which projected into the sea — 
forming the boundary dividing the Tuscan and 
Lucchese States. We walked along the shore 
to the grave, where Byron and Hunt soon joined 
us : they, too, had an officer and soldiers from 
the tower of Migliarino, an officer of the Health 
Office, and some dismounted dragoons, so we 
were surrounded by soldiers, but they kept the 
ground clear, and readily lent their aid. There 
was a considerable gathering of spectators from 
the neighbourhood, and many ladies richly dres- 
sed were amongst them. The spot where the 
body lay was marked by the gnarled root of a 
pine tree. 

A rude hut, built of young pine-tree stems, 
and wattled with their branches, to keep the sun 
and rain out, and thatched with reeds, stood on 
the beach to shelter the look-out man on duty. 
A few yards from this was the grave, which we 
commenced opening — the Gulf of Spezzia and 



132 RECOLLECTIOXS OF THE 

Leghorn at equal distances of twenty-two miles 
from us. As to fuel, I might have saved myself 
the trouble of bringing any, for there was an 
ample supply of broken spars and planks cast 
on the shore from wrecks, besides the fallen and 
decaying timber in a stunted pine forest close 
at hand. The soldiers collected fuel whilst I 
erected the furnace, and then the men of the 
Health Office set to work, shovelling away the 
sand which covered the body, while we gathered 
round, watching anxiously. The first indication 
of their having found the body, was the appear- 
ance of the end of a black silk handkerchief — 
I grubbed this out with a stick, for we were not 
allowed to touch any thing with our hands — 
then some shreds of linen were met with, and a' 
boot with the bone of the leg and the foot in it. 
On the removal of a layer of brushwood, all 
that now remained of my lost friend was ex- 
posed — a shapeless mass of bones and flesh. 
The limbs separated from the trunk on being 
touched. 

'^ Is that a human body ? " exclaimed Byron ; 
" why it's more like the carcase of a sheep, or 
any other animal, than a man : this is a satire 
on our pride and folly." 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 

I pointed to the letters E. E. W. on the black 
silk handkerchief. 

Byron looking on, muttered, " The entrails of 
a worm hold together longer than the potter's 
clay, of which man is made. Hold ! let me see 
the jaw," he added, as they were removing the 
skull, " I can recognize any one by the teeth, 
with whom I have talked. I always watch the 
lips and mouth : they tell what the tongue and 
eyes try to conceal." 

I had a boot of Williams's with me ; it ex- 
actly corresponded with the one found in the 
grave. The remains were removed piecemear 
into the furnace. 

" Don't repeat this with me," said Byron ; "let 
my carcase rot where it falls." 

The funereal pyre was now ready ; I applied 
the fire, and the materials, being dry and resinous, 
the pine-wood burnt furiously, and drove us 
back. It was hot enough before, there was no 
breath of air, and the loose sand scorched our 
feet. As soon as the flames became clear, and 
allowed us to approach, we threw frankincense 
and salt into the furnace, and poured a flask of 
wine and oil over the body. The Greek oration 
was omitted, for we had lost our Hellenic bard. 



f 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



It was now so insufferably hot that the officers 
and soldiers were all seeking shade. 

" Let us try the strength of these waters that 
drowned our friends," said Byron, with his usual 
audacity. " How far out do you think they 
were when their boat sank ? " 

" If you don't wish to be put into the furnace, 
you had better not try; you are not in con- 
dition." 

He stripped, and went into the water, and so 
did I and my companion. Before we got a 
mile out, Byron was sick, and persuaded to re- 
turn to the shore. My companion, too, was 
seized with cramp, and reached the land by my 
aid. At four o'clock the funereal pyre burnt 
low, and when we uncovered the furnace, noth- 
ing remained in it but dark-coloured ashes, with 
fragments of the larger bones. Poles were now 
put under the red-hot furnace, and it was grad- 
ually cooled in the sea. I gathered together the 
human ashes, and placed them in a small oak- 
box, bearing an inscription on a brass plate, 
screwed it down, and placed it in Byron's car- 
riage. He returned with Hunt to Pisa, promis- 
ing to be with us on the following day at Via 
Reggio. I returned with my party in the same 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 3-35 

way we came, and supped and slept at the inn. 
On the following morning we went on board 
the same boats, with the same things and party, 
and rowed down the little river near Via Reggio 
to the sea, pulled along the coast towards Mas- 
sa, then landed, and began our preparations as 
before. 

Three white wands had been stuck in the 
sand to mark the Poet's grave, but as they were 
at some distance from each other, we had to cut 
a trench thirty yards in length, in the line of the 
sticks, to ascertain the exact spot, and it was 
nearly an hour before we came upon the grave. 

In the mean time Byron and Leigh Hnnt ar- 
rived in the carriage, attended by soldiers, and 
the Health Officer, as before. The lonely and 
grand scenery that surrounded us so exactly 
harmonized with Shelley's genius, that I could 
imagine his spirit soaring over us. The sea, 
with the islands of Gorgona, Capraji, and Elba, 
was before us ; old battlemented watch-towers 
stretched along the coast, backed by the marble- 
crested Apennines glistening in the sun, pictu- 
resque from their diversified outlines, and not a 
human dwelling was in sight. As I thought of 
the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of loneli- 



136 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

ness and grandeur whilst living, I felt we were 
no better than a herd of wolves or a pack of 
wild dogs, in tearing out his battered and naked 
body from the pure yellow sand that lay so 
lightly over it, to drag him back to the light of 
day; but the dead have no voice, nor had I 
power to check the sacrilege — the work went on 
silently in the deep and unresisting sand, not a 
word was spoken, for the Italians have a touch 
of sentiment, and their feelings are easily excited 
into sympathy. Even Byron was silent and 
thoughtful. We were startled and drawn to- 
gether by a dull hollow sound that followed the 
blow of a mattock ; the iron had struck a skull, 
and the body was soon uncovered. Lime had 
been strewn on it ; this, or decomposition, had 
the effect of staining it of a dark and ghastly 
indigo colour. Byron asked me to preserve the 
skull for him ; but remembering that he had for- 
merly used one as a drinldng-cup, I was deter- 
mined Shelley's should not be so profaned. The 
limbs did not separate from the trunk, as in the 
case of Williams's body, so that the corpse was 
removed entire into the furnace. I had taken 
the precaution of having more and larger pieces 
of timber, in consequence of my experience of 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 137 

the day before of the difficulty of consuming a 
corpse in the open air with our apparatus. 
After the fire was well kindled we repeated the 
ceremony of the previous day ; and more wine 
was poured over Shelley's dead body than he 
had consumed during his life. This with the 
oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and 
quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so 
intense that the atmosphere was tremulous and 
wavy. The corpse fell open and the heart was 
laid bare. The frontal bone of the skull, where 
it had been struck with the mattock, fell off; 
and, as the back of the head rested on the red- 
hot bottom bars of the furnace, the brains liter- 
ally seethed, bubbled, and boiled as in a cauldron, 
for a very long time. 

Byron could not face this scene, he withdrew 
to the beach and swam off to the ' Bolivar.' 
Leigh Hunt remained in the carriage. The fire 
was so fierce as to produce a white heat on the 
iron, and to reduce its contents to grey ashes. 
The only portions that were not consumed were 
some fragments of bones, the jaw, and the skull, 
but what surprised us all, was that the heart 
remained entire. In snatching this relic from 
the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt ; 



138 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

and had any one seen me do the act I should 
have been put into quarantine. 

After cooling the iron machine in the sea, I 
collected the human ashes and placed them in 
a box, which I took on board the ' Bolivar.' 
Byron and Hunt retraced their steps to their 
home, and the officers and soldiers returned to 
their quarters. I liberally rewarded the men for 
the admirable manner in which they behaved 
during the two days they had been with us. 

As I undertook and executed this novel cere- 
mony, I have been thus tediously minute in de- 
scribing it. 

Byron's idle talk, during the exhumation of 
Williams's remains, did not proceed from want 
of feeling, but from his anxiety to conceal what 
he felt from others. When confined to his bed 
and racked by spasms, which threatened his life, 
I have heard him talk in a much more un- 
orthodox fashion, the instant he could muster 
breath to banter. He had been taught during 
his town-life, that any exhibition of sympathy or 
feeling was maudlin and unmanly, and that the 
appearance of daring and indifference, denoted 
blood and high breeding. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 139 



CHAPTER XIII. 

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, — 
Princes, the dregs of tlieir dull race, who flow 
Through public scorn — mud from a muddy spring, — 
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, 
But leech-like to their fainting country cling, 
Till they di*op blind in blood. 

England in 1819. — Shelley. 

When I arrived at Leghorn, as I could not 
immediately go on to Rome, I consigned Shel- 
ley's ashes to our Consul at Rome, Mr. Free- 
born, requesting him to keep them in his custody 
until my arrival. When I reached Rome, Free- 
born told me that to quiet the authorities there, 
he had been obliged to inter the ashes with the 
usual ceremonies in the Protestant burying- 
place. When I came to examine the ground 
with the man who had the custody of it, I found 
Shelley's grave amidst a cluster of others. The 
old Roman wall partly inclosed the place, and 
there was a niche in the wall formed by two 
buttresses — immediately under an ancient pyra- 
mid, said to be the tomb of Caius Cestius. 



•140 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

There were no graves near it at that time. This 
suited my taste, so I purchased the recess, and 
sufficient space for planting a row of the Italian 
upright cypresses. As the souls of Heretics are 
foredoomed by the Roman priests, they do not 
affect to trouble themselves about their bodies. 
There was no " faculty " to apply for nor 
Bishop's license to exhume the body. The 
custode or guardian who dwelt within the in- 
closure and had the key of the gate, seemed to 
have uncontrolled power within his domain, 
and scudi, impressed with the image of Saint 
Peter with the two keys, ruled him. Without 
more ado, masons were hired, and two tombs 
built in the recess. In one of these, when com- 
pleted, I deposited the box, with Shelley's ashes, 
and covered it in with solid stone, incribed with 
a Latin epitaph, written by Leigh Hunt.- I 
received the following note at Leghorn previous 
. to burning the body : — 

«'Pm, Isi August, 1822. 

" Dear Trelawny, 

" You will of course call upon us in your 

way to your melancholy task ; but I write to 

say, that you must not reckon upon passing 

through Pisa in a very great hurry, as the ladies 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 141 

particularly wish to have an evening, while you 
are here, for consulting further Avith us ; and I 
myself mean, at all events, to accompany you 
on your journey, if you have no objection. 

" I subjoin the inscriptions — mere matter-of- 
fact memorandums — according to the wish of 
the ladies. It will be for the other inscriptions 
to say more. 

" Yours sincerely, 

" Leigh Hunt. 

" P. S. — Mrs. Shelley wishes very much that 
Capt. Roberts would be kind enough to write 
to his uncle about her desk, begging it to be 
forwarded as speedily as possible. If it is nec- 
essary to be opened, the best way will be to 
buy a key for that purpose ; but if a key is not 
to be had, of course it must be broken open. 
As there is something in the secret drawers, it 
will be extremely desirable that as few persons 
meddle with it as possible. 

"Percy Bysshe Shelley, Anglus, oram Etrus- 
cam legens in navigiolo inter ligurnum portum 
ET ViAM Regiam, procella periit viii. Non. Jul. 

MDCCGXXII. iElAT. Su.E XXX. 



142 EECOLLECTIONS OP THE 

" Edvardus Elliker Williams, Anglica stirpe 
ORTUS, India Orientali natus, a Ligurno portu in 
ViAM Regiam navigiolo proficiscens, tempestate 
PERiiT viiL NoN. Jul. mdcccxxii. ^Etat. Su^e xxx." 

"lo, SOTTOSCRITTA, PKEGO LE AUTORITA BI VlA ReGGIO O 
LiVORNO DI CONSEGNARE AL SiGNORE OdOARDO TrELAWNY, 

Ingles E, la Barca nominata II Don Juan, e tutta la sua 

CARICA, APPARTENENTE AL MIO MARITO, PER ESSERE ALLA SUA 

DispozizioNE. Maria Shelley. 

" GeNOVA, 16 SETTbre, 1822." 

To which I added two lines from Shelley's fa- 
vourite play " The Tempest," 

" Nothing of him that doth fade, 
But doth suffer a sea change into something 
Rich and strange." 

The other tomb built merely to fill up the 
recess, was likewise covered in in the same way 
— but blank without as within. I planted eight 
seedling cypresses. When I last saw them in 
1844, the seven which remained, were about 
thirty-five feet in height. I added flowers as 
well. The ground I had purchased, I inclosed, 
and so ended my task. 

Shelley came of a long-lived race, and, barring 
accidents, there was no reason why he should 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 143 

not have emulated his forefathers in attaining 
a ripe age. He had no other complaint than 
occasional spasms, and these were probably 
caused by the excessive and almost unremitting 
strain on his mental powers, the solitude of his 
life, and his long fasts, which were not inten- 
tional, but proceeded from the abstraction and 
forgetfulness of himself and his wife. If food 
was near him, he ate it, — if not, he fasted, and 
it was after long fasts that he suffered from 
spasms. He was tall, slim, and bent from eter- 
nally poring over books ; this habit had con- 
tracted his chest. His limbs were well propor- 
tioned, strong and bony — his head was very 
small — and his features were expressive of great 
sensibility, and decidedly feminine. There was 
nothing about him outwardly to attract notice, 
except his extraordinarily juvenile appearance. 
At twenty-nine, he still retained on his tanned 
and freckled checks, the fresh look of a boy — 
although his long wild locks were coming into 
blossom, as a polite hairdresser once said to me, 
whilst cutting mine. 

It was not until he spoke that you could dis- 
cern anything uncommon in him — but the first 
sentence he uttered, when excited by his subject. 



144 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

riveted your attention. The light from his very- 
soul streamed from his eyes, and every mental 
emotion of which the human mind is suscep- 
tible, was expressed in his pliant and ever- 
changing features. He left the conviction on 
the minds of his audience, that however great 
he was as a Poet, he was greater as an orator. 
There was another and most rare peculiarity in 
Shelley, — his intellectual faculties completely 
mastered his material nature, and hence he un- 
hesitatingly acted up to his own theories, if they 
only demanded sacrifices on his part, — it was 
where they implicated others that he forbore. 
Mrs. Shelley has observed, " Many have sug- 
gested and advocated far greater innovations in 
our political and social system than Shelley ; 
but he alone practised those he approved of as 
just." 

Godwin observed to me, — " that Byron must 
occasionally have said good things, though not 
capable, as Shelley was, of keeping up a long 
conversation or argument; and that Shelley 
must have been of great use to Byron, as from 
the commencement of their intimacy at Geneva, 
he could trace an entirely new vein of thought 
emanating from Shelley, which ran through 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYROX. 145 

Byron's subsequent works, and was so peculiar 
that it could not have arisen from any other 
source." This was true. Byron was but super- 
ficial on points on which Shelley was most pro- 
found — and the latter's capacity for study, the 
depth of his thoughts as well as their boldness, 
and his superior scholarship, supplied the former 
with exactly what he wanted : and thus a por- 
tion of Shelley's aspirations were infused into 
Byron's mind. Ready as Shelley always was 
with his purse or person to assist others, his 
purse had a limit, but his mental wealth seemed 
to have none ; for not only to Byron, but to any 
one disposed to try his hand at literature, Shelley 
was ever ready to give any amount of mental 
labour. Every detail of the life of a man of 
genius is interesting, and Shelley's was so pre- 
eminently, as his life harmonized with his spir- 
itual theories. He fearlessly laid bare those 
mysterious feelings and impulses, of which few 
dare to speak, but in a form so purified from 
earthy matter that the most sensitive reader is 
never shocked. Shelley says of his own writ- 
ings in the preface to the Cenci, — "they are 
little else than visions which impersonate my 

own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just, 
10 



146 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

— they are dreams of what ought to be, or may- 
be." Whilst he lived, his works fell still-born 
from the press — he never complained of the 
world's neglect, or expressed any other feeling 
than surprise at the rancorous abuse wasted on 
an author who had no readers. " But for them," 
he said, laughing, " I should be utterly Un- 
known." " But for them," I observed, " "Wil- 
liams and I should never have crossed the Alps 
in chase of you. Our curiosity as sportsmen, 
was excited to see and have a shot at so strange 
a monster as they represented you to be." 

It must not be forgotten, that Shelley lived in 
the good old times, under the paternal govern- 
ment of the Tories, when liberal opinions were 
prohibited and adjudged as contraband of war. 
England was then very much like what Naples 
is now. 

Sidney Smith says, — 

" From the beginning of the century to the 
death of Lord Liverpool, was an awful period 
for any one who ventured to maintain liberal 
opinions. He was sure to be assailed with all 
the Billingsgate of the French Revolution ; 
* Jacobin,' ' Leveller,' ' Atheist,' ' Incendiary,' 
' Regicide,' were the gentlest terms used, and 



LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 147 

any man who breathed a syllable against the 
senseless bigotry of the two Georges, was 
shunned as unfit for social life. To say a 
word against any abuse which a rich man in- 
flicted, and a poor man suffered, was bitterly 
and steadily resented," and he adds, " that in 
one year, 12,000 persons were committed for 
offences against the Game Laws." 

Shelley's life was a proof that the times in 
which he lived were awful for those who dared 
to maintain liberal opinions. They caused his 
expulsion from Oxford, and for them his parents 
discarded him, every member of his family dis- 
owned him, and the savage Chancellor Eldon 
deprived him of his children. 

Sidney Smith says of this Chancellor, that 
he was " the most heartless, bigoted, and mis- 
chievous of human beings, who passed a long 
life in perpetuating all sorts of abuses, and in 
making money of them." 



148 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER XIV. 

It is mentioned in my narrative, that when 
I left Leghorn, in the ' Bolivar,' to burn the 
bodies, I despatched two large feluccas, with 
ground-tackling to drag for Shelley's foundered 
boat, having previously ascertained the spot in 
which she had been last seen afloat. This was 
done for five or six days, and they succeeded in 
finding her, but failed in getting her up. I then 
wrote the particulars to my friend Capt. Roberts, 
who was still at Genoa, asking him to complete 
the business. He did so, whilst I went on to 
Rome, and, as will be seen by the following 
letters, he not only found, but got her up, and 
brought her into the harbour of Leghorn. 

Pisa, Sept. 1822. 

Dear T. 

We have got fast hold of Shelley's boat, 

and she is now safe at anchor off Via Reggio. 

Every thing is in her, and clearly proves, that 

she was not capsized. I think she must have 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 149 

been swamped by a heavy sea ; we found in 
her two trunks, that of Williams, containing 
money and clothes, and Shelley's, filled with 
books and clothes. 

Yours, very sincerely, 

Dan Roberts. 



Dear T. 

I consulted Ld. B., on the subject of paying 
the crews of the felucca employed in getting up 
the boat. He advised me to sell her by auction, 
and to give them half the proceeds of the sale. 
I rode your horse to Via Reggio. On Monday 
we had the sale, and only realized a trifle more 
than two hundred dollars. 

The two masts were carried away just above 
board, the bowsprit broken off close to the bows, 
the gunwale stove in, and the hull half full of 
blue clay, out of which we fished clothes, books, 
spy-glass, and other articles. A hamper of wine 
that Shelley bought at Leghorn, a present for 
the harbour-master of Lerici, was spoilt, the 
corks forced partly out of the bottles, and the 
wine mixed with the salt-water. You know, 
this is effected by the pressure of the cold 
sea-water. 



150 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

We found in the boat two memorandum- 
books of Shelley's, quite perfect, and another 
damaged, a journal of Williams's, quite perfect, 
written up to the 4th of July. I washed the 
printed books, some of them were so glued to- 
gether by the slimy mud, that the leaves could 
not be separated, most of these things are now 
in Ld. B's custody. The letters, private papers, 
and Williams's journal, I left in charge of Hunt, 
as I saw there were many severe remarks on 
Ld. B. 

Ld. B. has found out that you left at Genoa 
some of the ballast of the * Bolivar,' and he 
asked me to sell it for him. What a damned 
close calculating fellow he is. You are so big- 
oted in his favour that I will say no more, only 
God defend me from ever having any thing more 
to do with him. 

P. S. — On a close examination of Shelley's 
boat, we find many of the timbers on the star- 
board quarter broken, which makes me think for 
certain, that she must have been run down by 
some of the feluccas in the squall. 

Dan Roberts. 

Byron's spirit was always on the fret and 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 151 

fume to be doing something new and strange ; 
he exhausted himself in speculating, plotting, 
and planning ; but when it came to the point of 
execution, the inertness of his body and his halt- 
ing gait, held him fast, so that few men even 
amongst the poets did more in imagination and 
less in reality than he did. One of his pleas for 
hoarding money was, that he might buy a pro- 
vince in Chili or Peru, to which he once added 
archly, " of course with a gold or silver mine to 
pay usance for my moneys : " at another time it 
was Mexico and copper ; and when savage with 
the Britishers, he would threaten to go to the 
United States and be naturalized ; he once asked 
me to apply to the American consul at Leghorn, 
and Commodore Jones of the American navy, 
then in the harbour, offered him a passage. By- 
ron visited the ship, and was well pleased with 
his reception; there was a beginning but no 
middle or end to his enterprises. The under- 
current of his mind was always drifting towards 
the East; he envied the free and independent 
manner in which Lady Hester Stanhope lived 
in Syria, and often reverted to it. He said he 
would have gone there if she had not forestalled 
him. 



152 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

Then his thoughts veered round to his early 
love, the Isles of Greece, and the revolution in 
that country — for before that time he never 
dreamt of donning the warrior's plume, though 
the peace-loving Shelley had suggested and I 
urged it. He asked me to get him any informa- 
tion I could amongst my friends at Leghorn of 
the state of Greece ; but as it was a common prac- 
tice of his to make such inquiries without any 
serious object, I took little heed of his request. 

We were then at Pisa in the old palace, which 
he was about giving up, Mrs. Shelley having 
gone to Genoa, and taken for him the Casa 
Saluzzi at Albaro, near Genoa ; the Hunts too 
were about moving to the same destination. I 
had determined to return to Rome, but stopped 
to convoy them in the ' Bolivar.' 

When a lazy and passive master who has 
never learnt, or if he may have learnt has forgot- 
ten, how to put on his trousers, shave, or brush 
his hair, in a sudden ecstasy or impulse resolves 
to do everything for himself and everybody else, 
as Byron now attempted to do, the hubbub, din, 
and confusion that ensue are frightful. If the 
Casa Lanfranchi had been on fire at midnight it 
could not have been worse, nor I more pleased 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 153 

at escaping from it, as I did, under the plea of 
getting the flotilla ready at Leghorn. 

In September we all left Tuscany, Byron by 
land, the Hunts in one felucca ; and Byron's 
servants, and what the Yankee would have 
called a freight of notions, in another ; for as 
Byron never sold or gave away anything he had 
acquired, there was all the rubbish accumulated 
in the many years he had lived in Italy, besides 
his men, women, dogs, and monkeys, and all 
that was theirs. In the ' Bolivar ' I had only a 
few things, such as plate, books, and papers ; 
we put into Lerici, and there all met again. I 
took Hunt to the Villa Magni where Shelley 
had lived. Byron came on board the ' Bolivar,' 
we had a sail and a swim, after which he was 
seized with spasms and remained two days 
in bed. On my visiting him and questioning - 
him as to his ailments, he said he was always 
" bedevilled for a week after moving." 

" No wonder," I answered, " if you always 
make such a dire commotion before it." 

" Look in that book," pointing to one on the 
table, * Thomas's Domestic Medicine,' " look for 
a prescription." 

" For what ? what is your complaint ? " I 
said, " How do you feel ? " 



154 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

" Feel ! why just as that damned obstreperous 
fellow felt chained to a rock, the vultures gnaw- 
ing my midriff, and vitals too, for I have no 
liver." As the spasms returned, he roared out, 
" I don't care for dying, but I cannot bear this I 
It's past joking, call Fletcher ; give me some- 
thing that will end it — or me ! I can't stand it 
much longer." 

His valet brought some ether and laudanum, 
and we compounded a drench as prescribed in 
the book, with an outward application of hot 
towels, and other remedies. Luckily, the medi- 
co of Lerici was absent, so in two or three days 
our patient was well enough to resume his jour- 
ney, and we all started for Genoa where we 
arrived without further accident. 

All that were now left of our Pisan circle 
established themselves at Albaro — Byron, Leigh 
Hunt, and Mrs. Shelley. I took up my quarters 
in the city of palaces. The fine spirit that had 
animated and held us together was gone ! Left 
to our own devices, we degenerated apace. 
Shelley's solidity had checked Byron's flip- 
pancy, and induced him occasionally to act 
justly, and talk seriously ; now he seemed more 
sordid and selfish than ever. He behaved shab- 



■LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 155 

bily to Mrs. Shelley; I might use a harsher 
epithet. In all the transactions between Shelley 
and Byron in which expenses had occurred, and 
they were many, the former, as was his custom, 
had paid all, the latter promising to repay ; but 
as no one ever repaid Shelley, Byron did not 
see the necessity of his setting the example ; 
and now that Mrs. Shelley was left destitute by 
her husband's death, Byron did nothing for her. 
He regretted this when too late, for in our voy- 
age to Greece he alluded to Shelley, saying, 
" Tre, you did what I should have done, let us 
square accounts to-morrow ; I must pay my 
debts." I merely observed, " Money is of no 
use at sea, and when you get on shore you will 
find you have none to spare ; " he probably 
thought so too, for he said nothing more on the 
subject. 

I was not surprised at Byron's niggardly 
ways, he had been taught them in boyhood by 
his mother. In early manhood he was a good 
fellow and did generous things ; until bad com- 
pany, called good society, spoilt and ruined 
him. To recover his fortune and sustain his 
pride, he relapsed into the penurious habits 
drilled into him in his youth. 



156 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER XV. 



It is the same! — For be it joy or sorrow, 

The path of its departure still is free; 
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; 
i Naught may endure but Mutability. 

Shelley. 



Byron, in common with actors and other 
public characters, considered it indispensable to 
the preservation of his popularity that he should 
keep continually before the public ; and that an 
alliance with an able and friendly newspaper 
would be an easy way of doing so. Not that 
he would or could submit to the methodical 
drudgery of continually waiting for one, but that 
he might occasionally use it for criticizing and 
attacking those who offended him, as a vent for 
his splenetic humours. Shelley, knowing Byron 
could not reason, and that his criticism degen- 
erated into rancorous personality, opposed the 
scheme ; still, Byron had a hankering to try his 
powers in those hand-to-hand conflicts then in 
vogue, even in the great Reviews. When he 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 157 

consented to join Leigh Hunt and others in 
writing for the ' Liberal,' I think his principal 
inducement was in the belief that John and 
Leigh Hunt were proprietors of the ' Exam- 
iner ; ' — so when Leigh Hunt at Pisa told him 
he was no longer connected with that paper, 
Byron was taken aback, finding that Hunt 
would be entirely dependent on the success of 
their hazardous project, while he would himself 
be deprived of that on which he had set his 
heart, — the use of a weekly paper in great cir- 
culation. 

The death of Shelley, and the failure of the 
* Liberal,' irritated Byron ; the cuckoo note, " I 
told you so," sung by his friends, and the loud 
crowing of enemies, by no means allayed his 
ill-humour. In this frame of mind he was con- 
tinually planning and plotting how to extricate 
himself. His plea for hoarding was that he 
might have a good round tangible sum of cur- 
rent coin to aid him in any emergency, as 
" money," he observed, " is the only true and 
constant friend a wise man puts his trust in. 
I can now raise nine or ten thousand, and with 
that I can buy an island in the Greek Archi- 
pelago, or a principality of auriferous soil in 



158 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

Chili or Peru. Lady Hester Stanhope's way of 
life in Syria would just suit my humour." I 
urged him on, for I was bent on travel and 
willing to go anywhere. He exhausted himself 
in planning, projecting, beginning, wishing, in- 
tending, postponing, regretting, and doing noth- 
ing ; the unready are fertile in excuses, and his 
were inexhaustible; so I determined to be off. 
At this time a committee was formed in Lon- 
don to aid the Greeks in their war of independ- 
ence, and shortly after I wrote to one of the 
most active movers in it, Lieut. Blaquiere, to 
ask information as to their objects and inten- 
tions, and mentioned Byron as being very much 
interested on the subject of Greece ; the Lieu- 
tenant wrote, as from the committee, direct to 
Byron, in the grandiloquent style which aU 
authorities, especially self-constituted ones, de- 
light in. In the early part of 1823 Blaquiere on 
his way to the Ionian Islands stopped at Genoa, 
and saw Byron, whom he informed of his in- 
tention to visit Greece, in order 'to see how 
matters were progressing. He said that his 
lordship had been unanimously elected a mem- 
ber of the Greek Committee, and that his name 
was a tower of strength; he brought Byron's 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYEON. 159 

credentials, and a mass of papers. The propo- 
sitions of the committee came at the right mo- 
ment ; the Pilgrim was dissatisfied with himself 
and his position. Greece and its memories 
warmed him, a new career opened before him. 
His first impulses were always ardent, but if 
not acted on instantly, they cooled. He was a 
prompt penman, often answering in hot haste, 
letters that excited his feelings, and following 
his first replies up by others to allay their fer- 
vour, or as the Persians have it, " eating his 
words." But the Greek Committee were not to 
be fobbed off; they resolved to have him on any 
terms, so they assented to all he suggested. 
The official style of the documents sent by the 
committee, the great seal and the prodigality of 
wax and diplomatic phrases, as well as the im- 
portance attached to his name, and the great 
events- predicted from his personal exertions, 
tickled the Poet's fancy, — and moreover they 
lauded and my-lorded him to his heart's con- 
tent. 

" With as little a web as this, will I ensnare as great a fly 
as Cassio." 

The negotiation with the committee occupied 



160 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

some months before Byron, perplexed in the 
extreme, finally committed himself. He might 
well hesitate. It would have been difficult to 
find a man more unfit for such an enterprise ; 
but he had a great name, and that was all the 
committee required. The marvel was that he 
lent it. Moore, Byron's biographer, suggests 
that he embarked in this crusade to rekindle his 
mental light and failing popularity, whereas the 
chronology of his works proves that his mental 
powers waxed stronger as he grew older, and 
that his last poems were his best. That envy, 
malice, and hatred be-dogged his steps, snarling 
and snapping, is true, but neither his power nor 
popularity had declined, nor did he think so. 
In after years, on my talking with the late Mr. 
Murray, his publisher, on this subject, he said, 
" I observed no falling off in his Lordship's 
powers or popularity during the latter period of 
his life, quite the reverse ; but I heard such 
general censures on him from literary and other 
people who frequented my shop, and they spoke 
in such a depreciating tone of his later writings, 
that I became greatly alarmed as his publisher ; 
and as I entertained a warm personal regard for 
his Lordship, I lightly touched on the subject 



LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 161 



» 



in my letters to him. I was a great fool for 
so doing, for Mr. Giffard, the ablest scholar of 
them all, and one who did not throw his words 
away, as well as a few men of the same stamp, 
occasionally dropped remarks which satisfied 
me I had done wrong in alluding to the subject, 
for it was after reading the latter cantos of 
* Don Juan ' that Mr. GifFard said — 

" ' Upon my soul, I do not know where to 
place Byron. I think we can't find a niche for 
him unless we go back and place him after 
Shakspeare and Milton ' — after a pause — ' there 
is no other place for him.' " 

I observed to Murray that Moore had only 
seen Byron in society ; his Life of his brother 
Bard was a mystification ; his comments might 
be considered very eloquent as a rhapsody, if 
they had been spoken over the Poet's grave, but 
they give no idea of the individuality of the 
man. 

" The most valuable parts of Moore's Life 
are the letters addressed to you," I continued ; 
" and as they were designed for publication, 
you should have printed them with his prose 
works." 

Murray replied, " You are quite right. If 
11 



162 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

ever a statute of lunacy is taken out against 
me, it must be on the plea of my mad agree- 
ment with Moore for Byron's Life, by which I 
lost credit, and a great deal of money ; but it is 
not too late to redeem my error so far as the 
public is concerned ; rather than leave it as it is 
I will get Lockhart, or somebody else, to do the 
thing: as it should be done." 

I have been seduced into this digression to 
show from what a small squad of malignants 
came the cry of Bjrron's failing powers and 
popularity. ^ ^ 

In December, 1822, I laid up the Poet's 
pleasure-boat, paid off the crew, retaining the 
first mate in my service as a groom, and early 
in the following year, 1823, started on horse- 
back — with the aforesaid sailor, mounted, to act 
as tender, — to take a cruise inland. So during 
Byron's negotiation with the Greek Committee, 
and Blaquiere's visit to Albaro, I was absent, 
but being apprised of what was going on, I was 
not surprised when in Rome at receiving the 
following note : — 

June 15, 1823. 

My dear T. 
You must have heard that I am going to 
Greece. Why do you not come to me ? I 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYROX. 163 

want your aid, and am exceedingly anxious to 
see you. Pray come, for I am at last deter- 
mined to go to Greece ; it is the only place I 
was ever contented in. I am serious, and did 
not write before, as I might have given you a 
journey for nothing ; they all say I can be of 
use in Greece. I do not know how, nor do 
they ; but at all events let us go. 

Yours, &c., truly, 

N. Byron. 

To show Byron's vacillating state of mind, I 
quote some passages from letters I received at 
that time. 

Captain Roberts, in a letter dated May 26, 
1823, Genoa, says, " Between you and me, I 
think, there is small chance of Byron's going to 
Greece ; so I think from the wavering manner 
in which he speaks of it ; he said the other day, 
' Well, Captain, if we do not go to Greece, I 
am determined to go somewhere, and hope we 
shall all be at sea together by next month, as I 
am tired of this place, the shore, and all the 
people on it.' " 

Ten days after, in a letter dated the 5th June, 
Roberts writes me : 



164: RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

" Byron has sold the ' Bolivar ' to Lord Bles- 
sington for four hundred guineas, and is deter- 
mined to go to Greece : he says, whilst he was 
in doubt, fearing it might prove a reality, he did 
not like to bring you here ; now, he wishes 
much to see you to have your opinion as to 
what steps it will be most necessary to take. 
I have been on board several vessels with him ; 
as yet he has not decided on any of them. I 
think he would find it answer, now he has sold 
the schooner, to buy the three-masted clipper 
we saw at Leghorn, to refit and arm her, as I 
am much of your way of thinking, for a big 
gun or two, and legs to run and wings to 
pursCie, as the case may be, for the Greek 
waters are pestered with pirates. I have written 
by his desire to Dunn about her ; if you come 
here by way of Leghorn, pray overhaul her, and 
then you will be able to give him your opinion. 
I think she will do excellently well, except the 
accommodation— the cabin is small. He has 
asked me to be of the party." 

Four days after I had received the above, 
Mrs. Shelley having just seen Byron, wrote me 
from Genoa, June 9th : 

" Lord Byron says, that as he has not heard 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 165 

from Greece, his going there is uncertain ; but 
if he does go, he is extremely desirous that you 
should join him, and if you will continue to let 
him know where you may be found, he will 
inform you as soon as he comes to any de- 
cision." 

This was not the last of Byron's counter-mes- 
sages to me, besides commissions which I was 
urged instantly to execute ; knowing him, I took 
no heed nor made any preparations until he 
wrote me that he had chartered a vessel. On 
the 22d I received this note from him : 

Dear T. 
I have engaged a vessel (now on her way to 
Leghorn to unload), and on her return to Genoa 
we embark. She is called the * Hercules ; ' you 
can come back in her, if you like, it will save 
you a land journey. I need not say I shall like 
your company of all things. I want a surgeon, 
native or foreign, to take charge of medical 
stores, and be in personal attendance. Salary, 
a hundred pounds a year, and his treatment at 
our table, as a companion and a gentleman. He 
must have recommendations, of course. Could 
you look out for me ? Perhaps you can consult 



166 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

Vacca, to whom I have written on the same 
subject; we are, however, pressed for time a 
little. I expect you with impatience, and am 
ever yours, 

N. B. 

Byron's letters to his literary allies were 
written carefully, expressly to be shown about. 
He said, on seeing the word private on a letter, 
" That will insure its becoming public. If I 
really wish mine to be private, I say things that 
my correspondents don't wish divulged." When 
he wrote on the spur of the moment his letters 
were often obscure and peevish ; if he gave them 
me to read, and I told him they would offend, 
he would rewrite them still more offensively. 
Omitting his more lengthy scrawls, as they 
would require tedious notes to explain them, I 
give two or three short samples of his ordinary 
natural style. 

On his hearing that a naval officer of the 
' Despatch ' sloop of war had boarded his boat 
at Leghorn, and taken away her pennant, he 
wrote to me : 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 167 

Pisa, August 10, 1822. 

Dear T. 
I always foresaw and told you that they 
would take every opportunity of annoying me 
in every respect. If you get American papers 
and permission to sail under their flag, I shall 
be very glad, and should much prefer it, but I 
doubt that it will be very difficult. 

Yours, N. B. 

Byron had a dispute with Captain Roberts on 
a very frivolous subject; he sent me a letter to 
forward to the Captain ; I refused to forward it, 
saying it would not do, on which he wrote me 
the following : 

Genoa, 9m. 28(7. 1822. 
My DEAR T. 

I inclose you a letter from, and another to, 
Captain R., which may be more to your taste, 
but at any rate it contains all that I have to say 
on the subject ; you will, I presume, write and 
inclose it or not, according to your own opinion 
[it was one of his long-winded offensive epistles, 
so I did not send it.] I repeat that I have no 
wish for a quarrel, but if it comes unlooked for, 
it must be received accordingly. I recognize no 



168 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

right in any man to interfere between me and 
men in my pay, of whose conduct I have the 
best right to judge. 

Yours, ever and afterwards, 

N. B. 

Qih Month, 21d. 1822. 

My dear T. 
Thank you, I was just going to send you 
down some books, and the compass of the ' Don 
Juan,' which I believe belongs to Captain Rob- 
erts ; if there is anything of yours on board 
the * Bolivar,' let me know, that I may send it 
or keep it for you. I don't know how our ac- 
count stands ; you will let me know if there is 
any balance due to you that I may pay it. I 
am willing to make ariy agreement with a 
proper person in the arsenal to look after her, 
and also to have the rigging deposited in a safe 
place. I have given the boy and one of the men 
their clothes, and if Mr. Beeze had been civil, 
and Frost honest, I should not have been 
obliged to go so near the wind with them. But 
I hate bothering you with these things. I agree 
with you in your parting sentence, and hope we 
shall have better luck another time. There is 
one satisfaction, however, which is, that the dis- 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 169 

pleasures have been rather occasioned by un- 
toward circumstances, and not by the disposi- 
tion of any party concerned. But such are 
human things even in little ; we would hardly 
have had more plague with a first-rate. No 
news of any kind from England, which don't 
look well. 

Yours, ever and truly, 

N. B. 

This referred to a threatened prosecution of 
his Vision of Judgment, which had been pub- 
lished in Hunt's ' Liberal.' 



170 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER XVI. 

He passed forth, and new adventure sought; 
Long way he travelled before he heard of aught. 

Faery Queene. 

Forwarding my traps to Leghorn, I was 
soon on the road to Genoa. My sailor groom 
had retm-ned to his family, and I engaged an 
American born negro to fill his place. In Italy, 
I invariably travelled on horseback. The dis- 
tances from one town to another are short, the 
scenery is varied, and the climate beautiful ; be- 
sides, Italy is peculiarly adapted to this slow, 
yet only way of thoroughly seeing a country. 
Most travellers fly through in a string, like a 
flock of wild geese, merely alighting at the great 
cities. As the weather was hot and the days 
long, we started every morning at four or five 
o'clock, and jogged along until ten or eleven, 
then pulled up at town, village, or solitary locan- 
da, or in default of these, looked out for a wood, 
dell, ruin, or other place that promised shade and 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 171 

water. Then dismounting we fed our horses 
from nose-bags, made up a fire, boiled coffee, 
breakfasted off such things as we had brought 
with us, smoked our pipes and fell asleep. Our 
provender was carried by the black, in old fash- 
ioned saddle-bags. In that fine climate our 
wants were so few, that they provided ample 
stowage room. I had two excellent Hungarian 
cavalry horses, bought from an Austrian colonel. 
Our usual day's travel was from thirty-five to 
forty-five miles; the best half of the distance, 
we always accomplished before breakfast, so 
that our day's journey was completed at four or 
five in the evening, and every day both horses 
and men improved in condition. If there is any 
healthier or pleasanter way of life than this, I 
can only say, I have never enjoyed it. 

However long the journey, it was never tedi- 
ous, and I always regretted its termination. I 
stopped two days at Florence, and then shaped 
my course for the sea-board, through Massa and 
Rapallo, Sarzana, Lerici, and Spezzia, on which 
coast everything was familiar to me, and asso- 
ciated with the memories of my lost friends 
Shelley and Williams. My horses stopped at 
their accustomed locandas, and many familiar 
faces came out to welcome me. 



172 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

I arrived early at Lerici, and determined to 
sleep there, and finish my journey to Genoa on 
the following day. In the evening, I walked to 
the Villa Magni, where the Shelleys had last 
lived, and the ground-floor having neither door 
nor window, I walked in. Shelley's shattered 
skiff* in which he used to go adventuring, as he 
termed it, in rivers and canals, was still there : 
in that little flat-bottomed boat he had written 
many beautiful things, — 

" Our boat is asleep on Sercliio's stream, 
The sails are furled like thoughts in a dream, 
The helm sways idly, hither and thither ; 
Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast, 
And the oars and the sail : but 'tis sleeping fast." 

And here it was, sleeping still on the mud floor, 
with its mast and oars broken. I mounted the 
stairs or rather ladder into the dining-room they 
had lived in, for this and four small bed-rooms 
was all the space they had. As I surveyed its 
splatchy-walls, broken floor, cracked ceiling, and 
poverty-struck appearance, while I noted the 
loneliness of 'the situation, and remembered the 
fury of the waves that in blowing weather lashed 
its walls, I did not marvel at Mrs. Shelley's and 



LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 173 

Mrs. Williams's groans on first entering it ; nor 
that it had required all Ned Williams's persua- 
sive powers to induce them to stop there. We 
men, had only looked at the sea and scenery, 
and would have been satisfied with a tent. But 
women look to a house as their empire. Ladies 
without a drawing-room, are like pictures with- 
out fi-ames, or birds without feathers ; knowing 
this, *they set to work with a will, and trans- 
formed it into a very pleasant abode. 

One of the customs of the natives of this bay, 
reminded me of the South Sea Islanders. At 
sunset the whole population of men, women, 
and children, took to the water, sporting in it for 
hours like wild ducks ; we occasionally did the 
same, Shelley especially delighting in the sport. 
EQs wife looked grave, and said "it was im- 
proper." Shelley protested vehemently against 
the arbitrary power of the word, saying, " Hush 
Mary, that insidious word has never been echoed 
by these woods and rocks : don't teach it them. 
It was one of the words my fellow serpent 
whispered into Eve's ear, and when I hear it, I 
wish I was far away on some lone island, with 
no other inhabitants than seals, sea-birds, and 
water-rats." Then turning to his friend, he con- 



174 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

tinued, " At Pisa, Mary said a jacket was not 
proper, because others did not wear them, and 
here it's not proper to bathe, because every body 
does. Oh ! what shall we do." 

The next day I started at daylight for Genoa, 
and when I came near Albaro, I sent my horses 
to the city, and walked to the Casa Saluzzi ; of 
which all the doors and windows were open, as 
is usual, in Italian country houses during 'sum- 
mer evenings. I walked in, and as I did not see 
any of Byron's people, I looked into five or six 
of the fifty or sixty rooms, which the palace con- 
tained, before I found the Pilgrim's penetralia : 
he was so deeply absorbed that he did not hear 
my steps. There he sat with a pen in his hand 
and papers before him, with a painfully per- 
plexed expression and heated brow, such as an 
inspired Pythoness might have had on her tripod. 
I thought it a sacrilege to profane his sanctuary, 
and was hesitating whether I should retreat or 
advance, when his bull-dog Moretto came in 
from the hall : so I spoke to the dog. 

Byron recognizing my voice, sprang up with 
his usual alacrity and shook my hand with un- 
usual warmth. After a hasty chat, he hallooed 
out lustily for his servants, for there were no 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 175 

bells : he was going out of the room saying, 
" You must -be hungry, we will see what there 
is in the house." 

I assured him I was not, and that I could not 
stop, as I wished to see Mrs. Shelley and the 
Leigh Hunts. 

" Aye, aye," he observed, " they are flesh- 
eaters — you scorn my lenten fare, but come back 
soon, I will dispatch my salad and sardines, and 
then we will discuss a bottle of hock, and talk 
over matters; I have a great deal to tell you, 
but I must first balance these cursed bills ; I 
have been an hour poring over this one you 
found me at, and my tottle don't square with 
Lega ; in the time thus lost I might have written 
half a canto of Don Juan — and the amount of 
the bill is only one hundred and forty-three lire, 
which is not six pounds. In cases of lunacy, 
the old demon El don decided men's sanity by 
figures ; if I had been had up before him, (I was 
very near being so,) and he had given me the 
simplest sum in arithmetic, I should have been 
consigned to durance vile — 

" ' For the rule of three it puzzles me, 
And practice drives me mad.' " 



176 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

In about an hour and a half, I returned to the 
Casa Saluzzi, and found the Poet, still hard at 
work on his weekly bills : he observed archly, 
" I have found out in another account of the 
steward's, that he has cheated himself; that is 
his affair, not mine." This put him in good 
humour, so he gathered up the scattered ac- 
counts and put them away. He then read me 
his correspondence with the Greek Committee, 
or rather the last portion of it, and a letter from 
Blaquiere, from Greece, and told me what he 
thought of doing. Promising to see Byron the 
following day, I left him and walked to my 
locanda at G^noa. It was plain enough from 
what I had just seen, that with regard to money, 
his mind had undergone no change. He thought 
he was in honour bound to go to Zante to meet 
Blaquiere, — the rest seemed to depend on blind 
chance. The Committee suggested no definite 
plan, nor could he form one. 

Mental as well as physical diseases are heredi- 
tary. Byron's arrogant temper he inherited, his 
penurious habits were instilled into him by his 
mother ; he was reared in poverty and obscurity 
and unexpectedly became a Lord, with a good 
estate : this was enough to unsettle the equanim- 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYROX. 177 

ity of such a temperament as his. But fortune 
as well as misfortune comes with both hands 
full, and when, as he himself said, he awoke one 
morning and found himself famous, his brain 
grew dizzy, and he foolishly entered the great 
donkey sweepstakes, and ran in the ruck with 
his long-eared compeers — galled in the race, he 
bolted oflf the course, and rushed into the ranks 
of that great sect that worships golden images. 
If you come too near the improvident or the 
reckless, there is danger of being engulfed in the 
vortex they create, whereas with the thrifty, 
you may do well enough. Thus ruminating, I 
reached my inn, the Croce di Malta. 

The next day Byron called, he wished me to 
go on board the brig he had chartered — ' The 
Hercules,' Capt. Scott, — to see her equipments 
and accommodations, and report thereon. I did 
so, and was very much dissatisfied. She was a 
collier-built tub of 120 tons, round-bottomed, 
and bluff-bowed, and of course, a dull sailer, 
with the bulk-heads, the horse-boxes, and other 
fittings newly put up, ill-contrived, and scamped 
by the contractor. The captain, one of the 
rough old John Bull stamp, was well enough — 
the mate better, and no fault to be found with 
12 



178 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

the crew, but that they were too few in number. 
For such an expedition we should have had a 
well-manned and fast-sailing clipper-built craft, 
adapted to the light winds and summer seas 
prevailing in the Greek Archipelago, so that after 
calling at the Ionian Islands, we could have used 
her as a yacht, run over to the Morea, touching 
at several ports not blockaded by the Turks, and 
ascertained the exact state of the war, its wants, 
capabilities, and more especially, the characters 
of those who conducted it. We might then have 
exacted conditions before committing ourselves 
to any specific line of action. Under the English 
flag, this and much more might have been done. 
On saying this to Byron, he answered — 

" There was no other vessel than the ' Hercules ' 
to be had at Genoa." 

" Leghorn is the place for shipping," said I. 

" Why, then, did you not come here sooner ? 
I had no one to help me." 

" You had Captain Roberts, the very man for 
the occasion ; we might as well have built a raft 
and so chanced it." 

Then smiling, he replied, " they say I have 
got her on very easy terms." 

"Aye, but the time she will be on her voyage, 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 179 

will make her a bad bargain ; she will take a 
week to drift to Leghorn, and it should be done 
in twenty hours." 

" We must make the best of it. I will pay 
her off at the Ionian Islands, and stop there 
until I see my way, for here we can learn noth- 
ing. Blaquiere is to meet me at Zante by ap- 
pointment, and he is now in the Morea." 



180 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER XVII. 



Awiik'ning with a start! 

The waters heave nround me: and on high 

The winds lift up their voices: I depart, 

"Whither I know not. 

Childe Harold. 



On the 13th of Jaly, 1823, we shipped the 
horses, four of Byron's, and one of mine, and in 
the evening, Byron, Gamba, and an unfledged 
medical student, with five or six servants, em- 
barked. I and my negro completed the comple- 
ment. On my observing to Byron the Doctor 
would be of no use, as he had seen no practice, 
he answered, " If he knows little I pay little, 
and we will find him plenty of work." The next 
day it was a dead calm, so we relanded ; on the 
15th we weighed anchor at daylight, several 
American ships, in compliment to Byron, send- 
ing their boats to tow us out of the bay, but 
made very little progress ; we lay in the offing 
all day like a log upon the main under a broil- 
ing sun, — the Italians skipping about, gesticulat- 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 181 

ing, and chattering like wild monkeys in a 
wood. The Pilgrim sat apart, solemn and sad, 
— -he took no notice of anything nor spoke a 
word. At midnight the sea breeze set in and 
quickly freshened, so we shortened sail and 
hauled our wind. As soon as the old tub be- 
gan to play at pitch and toss, the noisy Italians, 
with the exception of the Venetian gondolier, 
Baptista, crept into holes and corners in con- 
sternation. The horses kicked down their flimsy 
partitions, and my black groom and I had to 
secure them, while the sea got up and the wind 
increased. I told Byron that we must bear up 
for port, or we should lose our cattle — " Do as 
you like," he said. So we bore up, and after a 
rough night, reanchored in our former berth ; 
as the sun rose the wind died away, and one by 
one the land-lubbers crawled on deck. Byron 
having remained all night on deck, laughed at 
the miserable figure they cut ; they all went on 
shore, and I set to work with two or three Eng- 
lish carpenters to repair damages. 

In the evening we took a fresh departure, and 
the weather continuing fine, we had no other 
delay than that which arose from the bad sailing 
qualities of our vessel. We were five days on 



182 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

our passage to Leghorn, not averaging more 
than twenty miles a day. We all messed and 
most of us slept, on deck. Byron unusually 
silent and serious, was generally during the day 
reading Scott's ' Life of Swift,' Col. Hippesley's 
^ Expedition to South America,' Grimm's ' Cor- 
respondence,' or ' Rochefoucault.' This was his 
usual style of reading on shore. We were two 
days at Leghorn completing our sea stores. A 
Mr. Hamilton Brown and two Greeks, who had 
previously applied to Byron for a passage, came 
on board. One of the Greeks called himself. 
Prince Shilizzi, the other, Vitaili, assum.ed no 
higher rank than Captain. The friends who ac- 
companied them on board, whispered me to be 
wary of them, asserting that the Prince was a 
Russian spy, and the Captain in the interests of 
the Turks. This was our first sample of the 
morality of the modern Greeks. On my telling 
this to Byron, he merely said, " and a fair sample 
too of the ancient as well as modern, if Mitford 
is to be believed." 

Our Scotch passenger, with no other handle 
to his name than plain Mr. Hamilton Brown, 
was an acquisition ; he had been in office in the 
Ionian Islands, spoke Italian and Romaic, and 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 1S3 

knew a good deal of the Greeks, as well as the 
characters of the English residents in command 
of the Islands. From what we learnt from him 
we altered our plan, and instead of Zante de- 
cided on going to Cephalonia, as Sir C. J. Na- 
pier was in command there, and the only man 
in office favourably disposed to the Greeks and 
their cause. We remained two days at Leghorn 
completing our stores. I don't remember that 
Byron went on shore more than once, and then 
only to settle his accounts with his agent Webb. 
As we were getting under weigh, my friend 
Grant came on board, and gave Byron the latest 
English papers, Reviews, and the first volume 
of Las Cases ' Memoirs of Napoleon,' just out. 
On the 23d of July, 1823, we put to sea in the 
finest possible weather ; drifting leisurely along 
the Italian coast, we sighted Piombino, a town 
in the midst of the pestilential lagoons of the 
Maremma famous for its wild fowl and fevers ; 
a dark line of jungle fringed the shore for many 
leagues ; we crossed the mouth of the muddy 
Tiber; saw the Alban Mount, and Mount So- 
racte, the land-marks which point out the site of 
Rome. On coming near Lonza, a small islet, 
converted into one of their many dungeons by 
the Neapolitan government, I said to Byron, 



184 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

" There is a sight that would curdle the milky 
blood of a poet-laureate." 

" If Southey was here," he answered, " he 
would sing hosannas to the Bourbons. Here 
kings and governors are only the jailors and 
hangmen of the detestable Austrian barbarians. 
What dolts and drivellers the people are to sub- 
mit to such universal despotism. I should like 
to see, from this our ark, the world submerged, 
and all the rascals on it drowning like rats." 

I put a pencil and paper in his hand, saying, 

" Perpetuate your curses on tyranny, for poets 
like ladies generally side with the despots." 

He readily took the paper and set to work. I 
walked the deck and prevented his being dis- 
turbed. He looked as crest-fallen as a riotous 
boy, suddenly pounced upon by a master and 
given an impossible task, scrawling and scratch- 
ing out, sadly perplexed. After a long spell, he 
said, 

" You think it is as easy to write poetry as 
smoke a cigar, — look, it's only doggerel. Ex- 
temporizing verses is nonsense ; poetry is a dis- 
tinct faculty, — it won't come when called, — you 
may as well whistle for a wind ; a Pythoness 
was primed when put upon her tripod. I must 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 185 

chew the cud before I write. I have thought 
over most of my subjects for years before writ- 
ing a line." 

He did not, however, give up the task, and sat 
pondering over the paper for nearly an hour ; 
then gnashing his teeth, he tore up what he had 
written, and threw the fragments overboard. 

Seeing I looked disappointed — 

" You might as well ask me to describe an 
earthquake, whilst the ground was trembling 
under my feet. Give me time, — I can't forget 
the theme : but for this Greek business I should 
have been at Naples writing a Fifth canto of 
Childe Harold, expressly to give vent to my de- 
testation of the Austrian tyranny in Italy." 

Some time after, I suggested he should write 
a war song for the Greeks ; he did so afterwards. 
I saw the original amongst his papers at Misso- 
longhi, and made a copy of it which I have lost. 
Proceeding on our voyage, it was not until we 
had been some days fairly at sea, with no land 
to look back upon, that the Pilgrim regained 
something of his self-command, — he may have 
felt the truth of the old song — 

" Now we're in for- it, dani'ee what folly, boys, 
To be downliearted, yo ho." 



186 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

His sadness intermitted, and his cold fits alter- 
nated with hot ones. Hitherto he had taken 
very little notice of any thing, and when he 
talked it was with an effort. The lonely and 
grim-looking island of Stromboli was the first 
object that riveted his attention ; it was shrouded 
in the smoke from its eternal volcanic fires, and 
the waves rolling into the deep caverns at its 
base, boomed dismally. A poet might have 
compared it to the bellowings of imprisoned 
demons. 

Our Captain told us a story at night. It was 
an old tale told by all Levant sailors, and they 
are not particular as to names and dates. 

" That a ship from the port of London was 
lying off this island loading with sulphur, when 
her Captain, who was on shore superintending 
the men, distinctly saw Alderman Curtis, " 

" Not Alderman Curtis," shouted Byron, " but 
cut-throat Castlereagh ! " 

" Whoever it was, my Lord," continued the 
Skipper, " he was walking round and round the 
edge of the burning crater ; his mate and crew 
were witnesses of the same : and when the 
vessel returned to England they heard that the 
person they had seen was dead ; and the time of 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 187 

his death tallied exactly with the above event, 
as entered in the ship's log-book." 

Byron, taking up the yarn-spinning, said — 
" Monk Lewis told me, that he took lodgings 
at Weimar in Germany, and that every morning 
he was awakened by a rustling noise, as of 
quantities of papers being torn open and eagerly 
handled ; the noise came from a closet joining 
his room ; he several times got out of bed and 
looked into it, but there was no one there. At 
length he told the servant of the house : the man 
said, ' Don't you know the house is haunted ? It 
belonged formerly to a lady ; she had an only 
son, he left her and went to sea, and the ship 
was never heard of, — but the mother still be- 
lieved he would return, and passed all her time 
in reading foreign newspapers, of which the 
closet was full ; and when she died, at the same 
hour every morning, in that closet, her spirit is 
heard frantically tearing open papers.' 

" Monk Lewis," added Byron, " though so 
fond of a ghost story, was not superstitious, he 
believed nothing. Once at a dimicr party he 
said to me, across the table, ' Byron, what did 
you mean by calling me Apollo's sexton in your 
English Bards ? ' I was so taken aback I could 



188 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

not answer him, nor could I now. Now, Tre," 
he said, " it's your turn to spin a yarn." 

*' I will tell you one of presentiment," I said, 
" for you believe in that." 

" Certainly, I do," he rejoined. 

" The Captain of Lord Keith's ship, when she 
was lying at Leghorn, was on a visit to Signor 
Felleichi, at Pisa ; the Captain was of a very 
gay and talkative turn ; suddenly he became 
silent and sad ; his host asked if he was ill ? he 
said ' No, I wish I was on board my ship ; I feel 
as if I was going to be hanged.' At last he was 
persuaded to go to bed ; but, before he got to 
his room, an express arrived with the news that 
his ship was on fire. He instantly posted to 
Leghorn, went on board, worked his ship out of 
the harbour to avoid perilling the other vessels 
lying there, but in spite of great exertion the 
fire reached the magazine, and every soul per- 
ished. A little middy on shore at Leghorn, with 
a heart as great as his Captain's, gave a boatman 
a draft on Signor Felleichi for sixty pounds to 
put him alongside his ship." 

The Poet had an antipathy to everything 
scientific ; maps and charts offended him ; he 
would not look through a spy-glass, and only 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRO:^. 189 

knew the cardinal points of the compass ; build- 
ings the most ancient or modern he was as in- 
different to as he was to painting, sculpture, and 
music. But all natural objects, and changes in 
the elements, he was generally the first to point 
out and the last to lose sight of. We lay-to all 
night off Stromboli ; Byron sat up watching it. 
As he went down to his cabin at day-light, he 
said, — 

" If I live another year, you will see this scene 
in a fifth canto of Childe Harold." 

In the morning we entered the narrow strait 
of Messina, passed close by the precipitous pro- 
montory of Scylla, and at the distance of a mile 
on the opposite shore, Charybdis ; the waters 
were boiling and lashed into foam and whirl- 
pools by the conflicting currents and set of the 
the sea; in bad weather it is dangerous to ap- 
proach too near in small craft. The Poet had 
returned to his usual post by the taffrail ; and 
soon after Messina was spread out before us, 
with its magnificent harbour, quays, and pal- 
aces ; it was a gorgeous sight, and the surround- 
ing scenery was so diversified and magnificent, 
that I exclaimed — 

" Nature must have intended this for Para- 
dise." 



190 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

" But the devil," observed the Poet, " has con- 
verted it into Hell." 

After some deliberation the wind blowing 
fresh and fair, we reluctantly passed the city, 
and scudded through the Straits along the grim 
and rugged shores of Calabria ; at 2 p. m. we 
got into the vortex of another whirlpool, and the 
conflicting winds, currents, and waves contend- 
ing for mastery, held us captive. Our vessel 
was unmanageable, and there we lay oscillating 
like a pendulum for two hours close to the 
rocks, seeing vessels half-a-mile from us scud- 
ding by under double-reefed topsails. The spell 
broken, we resumed our course. On passing a 
fortress called the Pharo, in the narrowest part 
of the Strait, we had a good view of Mount 
Etna, with its base wreathed in mists, while the 
summit stood out in bold relief against the sky. 
To the east we had the savage shores of Cala- 
bria, with its gray and jagged rocks ; to the west 
the sunny and fertile coast of Sicily, — gliding 
close by its smooth hills and sheltered coves, 
Byron would point to some serene nook, and 
exclaim, " There I could be happy ! " 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 191 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

But let it go — it will one day be found 

With other relics of '• a former world," 
When this world shall be former underground, 

Thrown topsy-turvy, twisted, crisp'd, and curlM, 
Baked, fried, and burnt, turn'd inside out or drown'd. 

Don Juan. 

It was now the 30th of July, twelve days 
since our departure from Genoa, our ship would 
do any thing but go a-head, she was built on 
the lines of a baby's cradle, and the least touch 
of Neptune's foot set her rocking. I was glad 
of this, for it kept all the land-lubbers in their 
cribs. Byron was not at all affected by the 
motion, he improved amazingly in health and 
spirits, and said, " On shore, when I awake in 
the morning, I am always inclined to hang my- 
self, as the day advances, I get better, and at 
midnight I am all cock-a-whoop. I am better 
now than I have been for years." You never 
know a man's temper until you have been im- 
prisoned in a ship with him, or a woman's until 



192 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

you have married her. Few friendships can 
stand the ordeal by water ; when a yacht from 
England with a pair of these thus tried friends 
touches, — say at Malta or Gibraltar, — you may 
be sure that she will depart with one only. I 
never was on shipboard with a better com- 
panion than Byron, he was generally cheerful, 
gave no trouble, assumed no authority, uttered 
no complaints, and did not interfere with the 
working of the ship ; when appealed to, he al- 
ways answered, " do as you like." Every day at 
noon, he and I jumped overboard in defiance 
of sharks or weather; it was the only exercise 
he bad, for he could not walk the deck. His 
favourite toys — pistols, were not forgotten ; 
empty bottles and live poultry served as targets ; 
a fowl, duck, or goose, was put into a basket, 
the head and neck only visible, hoisted to the 
main yard-arm ; and we rarely had two shots at 
the same bird. No boy cornet enjoyed a prac- 
tical joke more than Byron. On great occasions 
when our Captain wished to be grand, he wore 
a bright scarlet waistcoat ; as he was very cor- 
pulent, Byron wished to see if this vest would 
not button round us both. The captain was tak- 
ing his siesta one day, when he persuaded the 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 193 

boy to bring up the waistcoat. In the mean 
time as it was nearly calm and very hot, I opened 
the coops of the geese and ducks, who instinc- 
tively took to the water. Neptune, the New- 
foundland dog, jumped after them, and Moretto, 
the bull-dog, followed him. 

" Now," said Byron, standing on the gang- 
way, with one arm in the red waistcoat, "put 
your arm in, Tre, we will jump overboard, and 
take the shine out of it." 

So we did. 

The captain hearing the row on deck, came 
up, and when he saw the gorgeous garment he 
was so proud of, defiled by sea water, he roared 
out, " My Lord, you should know better than to 
make a mutiny on board ship, [the crew were 
laughing at the fun,] I won't heave to, or lower 
a boat, I hope you will both be drowned." 

" Then you will lose your /nYe," (for so the 
Captain always pronounced the word freight) 
shouted Byron. 

As I saw the dogs worrying the ducks and 
geese, I returned on board with the waistcoat, 
pacified the skipper, lowered a boat, and with 
the aid of a boy, sculled after the birds and 
beasts ; the Newfoundlander brought them to 
13 



194 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

US unharmed, but Moretto, the bull-dog, did not 
mouth them so tenderly. After the glare and 
oppressive heat of the day, the evenings and 
nights were delightful : balmy air, no dew, and 
light enough to distinguish every thing near. 

Fletcher, Byron's " yeoman bold," as was his 
custom in the afternoon, was squatted under 
the lee of the caboose, eating his supper, and 
drinking bottled porter, which he dearly loved. 
I said, " You are enjoying yourself, Fletcher." 

" Yes," he answered, " and you had better do 
so whilst you can : my master can't be right in 
his mind." 

"Why?" I asked. 

" If he was, he would not have left Italy, 
where we had every thing, and go to a country 
of savages ; there is nothing to eat in Greece, 
but tough Billy Goats, or to drink, but spirits 
of turpentine. Why, sir, there is nothing there 
but rocks, robbers, and vermin." — Seeing his 
master coming up the companion ladder, he 
raised his voice — " I defy my Lord to deny it — 
you may ask him." 

" I don't deny it," said Byron ; " what he says 
is quite true to those who take a hog's eye view 
of things. But this I know, I have never been 



LAST DATS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 195 

SO happy as I was there ; how it will be with 
me, now that my head is as grey and my heart 
as hard as the rocks, I can't say." 

I followed Fletcher's advice and example in 
regard to the supper, and the Poet, saying he 
could not resist temptation, joined me. We 
discussed the pleasures and independence of 
sea-life as contrasted with the eternal restraint 
and botheration on shore. Here, I observed, 
we have only the elements to contend with, and 
a safe port under our lee, whereas on shore we 
never know what mischief is brewing ; a letter, 
or the idle gossip of a good-natured friend, stops 
our digestion — how smoothly the time glides 
on, now we are out of the reach of men and 
mischief-makers. 

" Women, you should say," exclaimed Byron : 
"if we had a womankind on board, she would 
set us all at loggerheads, and make a mutiny, 
would she not. Captain ? " 

" I wish my old woman was here," replied the 
skipper, '• she would make you as comfortable 
in my cabin at sea, as your own wife could in 
her parlour on shore." 

Byron started and looked savage — the Cap- 
tain went on as unconscious of offending as a 



196 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

cart-horse would be, after crushing your toes 
with his hoof. " My wife," he continued, " on 
my last voyage from Rio, saved my ship. We 
had touched there for water, homeward bound : 
she waked me up at night, — her weather eye 
was always open, — the men were desarting in a 
crimp's shore-boat. In the morning it came on 
to blow like blazes." 

" If we are to have a yarn. Captain, we must 
have strong waters." 

" I have no objection to a glass of grog," said 
the Captain ; " I am not a temperance man, but 
I can't abide drunkenness at sea. I like to have 
my allowance." 

" How much is that ? " asked Byron. 
" No more than will do me good." 
" How much is .that ? " 

" Why, a bottle of good old Jamaica rum 
sarves me from 11 a. m. till 10 p. m., and I know 
that can't hurt any man." 

Byron read a critique on O'Meara's ' Napo- 
leon at St. Helena,' in the ' Quarterly.' He 
remarked, " If all they assert is true, it only 
affects the character of the author. They do not 
disprove a single statement in the book : this is 
their way ! If they crush an author, it must be 



LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 197 

in the shell, as thev tried to do with me : if the 
book has life enough to outlive the year, it 
defies their malice — for who reads a last year's 
review? Whilst our literature is domineered 
over by a knot of virulent bigots and rancor- 
ous partisans, we shall have no great or original 
works. When did parsons patronize genius ? 
If one of their black band dares to think for 
himself, he is drummed out, or cast aside, like 
Sterne and Swift. Where are the great poets 
and writers the Reviewers predicted were to be 
the leviathans of our literature ? Extinct : their 
bones hereafter may be grubbed up in a fossil 
state with those of the reptiles that puffed them 
into life. If this age has produced any thing 
good or great, which I doubt, it has been un- 
der every possible discouragement. 

" People say that I have told my own story in 
my writings : I defy them to point out a single 
act of my life by my poems, or of my thoughts, 
for I seldom write what I think. All that has 
been published about me is sheer nonsense, as 
will be seen at my death, when my real life is 
published ; everything in that is true. When I 
first left England I was gloomy. I said so in 
my first canto of ' Childe Harold.' I was then 



198 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

really in love with a cousin, (Th^rza, he was 
very chary of her name,) and she was in a de- 
cline. On my last leaving England I was sav- 
age ; there was enough to make me so. There 
is some truth as to detail in the ' Dream,' and in 
some of my shorter poems. As to my marriage, 
which people made such ridiculous stories about, 
it was managed by Lady Jersey and others. I 
was perfectly indifferent on the subject; thought 
I could not do better, and so did they. I wanted 
money. It was an experiment, and proved a 
failure. Everything is told in my memoirs ex- 
actly as it happened. I told Murray Lady By- 
ron was to read the MS. if she wished it, and 
requested she would add, omit, or make any 
comments she pleased, now, or when it was 
going through the press." 

It is strange that Byron, though professing to 
distrust everybody, should have had no misgiv- 
ing as to the fate of his memoirs ; he was glad 
Moore sold them to Murray, as he thought that 
insured publication. He considered it indispen- 
sable to his honour that the truths he could not 
divulge during his life should be known at his 
death. He knew Moore prided himself on his 
intimacy with lords and ladies, for he was always 



LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 199 

talking of them, and that the chief aim and ob- 
ject of that Poet's whole life was pleasure at 
any price. Had he fulfilled his trust by giving 
Byron's memoirs to the world, he would have 
compromised himself with society, as they con- 
tained many a reminiscence which would have 
cast a shadow on the fashionable circles which 
Tom Moore delighted to honour. When the 
question was raised after Byron's death, of the 
publication or suppression of his memoirs, his 
friend Tom Moore acted as if he was quite in- 
different on the subject ; so he must have been, 
for although he permitted others to read them, 
he never found time to do so himself. He con- 
sulted the most fashionable man he knew on the 
subject, Lutterell, who, as Rogers says, " cared 
nothing about the matter, and readily voted they 
should be put in the fire." Byron said, " some 
few scenes and names in his memoirs it might 
be necessary to omit, as he had written the 
whole truth. Moore and Murray were to exer- 
cise their own discretion on that subject." He 
added, " that the truth would be known and be- 
lieved when he was dead, and the lies forgotten." 
So there is nothing to extenuate the great wrong 
done to Byron by Tom Moore. 



200 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

Byron's autobiography contained a narrative 
of the principal events of his life ; with running 
comments on those he came in contact with, 
or who crossed his path. It was written in a 
straightforward, manly manner, and in a vigor- 
ous, fearless style, and was apparently truthful 
as regarded himself; — if it was not the whole 
truth, it contained much more of that commod- 
ity than other writers have generally left us in 
their memoirs. Autobiography was the kind of 
reading he preferred to all others. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AXD BYRON. 201 



CHAPTER XIX. 

His life was one long war with self-sought foes, 
Or friends by him self-banished, for his mind 
Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary. 

CMlde Harold. 

Byron formed his opinion of the inhabitants 
of this planet from books ; personally he knew 
as little about them as if he belonged to some 
other. From reading Rochefoucauld, Machia- 
velli, and other soured cynics, he learnt to dis- 
trust people in general ; so, as he could do 
nothing without them, and did not know how 
to manage them, he was always complaining of 
being over-reached, and never getting what he 
wanted. I don't think he ever knew what he 
did want : few there are that do. 

To resume my log on board the good ship 
' Hercules.' On the 2d of August, the islands 
of Cephalonia and Zante were in sight, and 
shortly after Byron pointing out the Morea said, 
" I don't know why it is, but I feel as if the 
eleven long years of bitterness I have passed 



202 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

through since I was here, were taken off my 
shoulders, and I was scudding through the 
Greek Archipelago with old Bathurst, in his 
frigate." That night we anchored in the road- 
stead ; the next morning we worked into Argos- 
toli, the harbour of Cephalonia, and anchored 
near the town. An officer from the Health 
Office having examined our papers and log, 
gave us pratique. The secretary of the Resi- 
dent, Captain Kennedy, came on board ; he told 
us Colonel Napier was absent, but that we 
might depend on the Colonel's readiness to aid 
us in any thing that his orders to observe strict 
neutrality permitted. The captain gave us the 
latest news from the seat of war, and said Bla- 
quiere had gone to England, at which Byron 
was sorely vexed. The truth flashed across his 
mind, that he had been merely used as a decoy 
by the committee. " Now they have got me 
thus far they think I must go on, and they care 
nothing as to the result. They are deceived, I 
won't budge a foot farther until I see my way ; 
we will stay here ; if that is objected to, I will 
buy an island from the Greeks or Turks ; there 
must be plenty of them in the market." The 
instinct that enables the vulture to detect carrion 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 203 

afar off, is surpassed by the marvellous acute- 
ness of the Greeks in scenting money. The 
morning after our arrival a flock of ravenous 
Zuliote refugees alighted on our decks, attracted 
by Byron's dollars. Lega, the steward, a thor- 
ough miser, coiled himself on the money-chest 
like a viper. Our sturdy skipper was for driving 
them overboard with hand-spikes. Byron came 
on deck in exuberant spirits, pleased with their 
savage aspect and wild attire, and, as was his 
wont, promised a great deal more than he should 
have done; day and night they clung to his 
heels like a pack of jackals, till he stood at bay 
like a hunted lion, and was glad to buy them 
off, by shipping them to the Morea. On Colo- 
nel Napier's return to the island, he warmly 
urged Byron, and indeed all of us, to take up 
our quarters at his house ; from first to last, all 
the English on the island, the military as well 
as the civilians, vied with each other in friendly 
and hospitable acts. Byron preferred staying 
on board ; every afternoon he and I crossed the 
harbour in a boat, and landed on a rock to 
bathe ; on one of these occasions he held out 
his right leg to me, saying, 

" I hope this accursed limb will be knocked 
off in the war." 



204 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

" It won't improve your swimming," I an- 
swered ; " I will exchange legs if you will give 
me a portion of your brains." 

" You would repent your bargain," he said ; 
" at times I feel my brains boiling, as Shelley's 
did whilst you were grilling him." 

After bathing, we landed in an olive grove, 
eating our frugal supper under the trees. Our 
Greek passengers during the voyage said, that 
the Greeks generally were in favour of a mon- 
archical government ; the Greeks on the island 
confirmed this, saying it was the only way of 
getting rid of the robber chiefs who now tyran- 
nized and kept the country in a state of an- 
archy ; and as they must have a foreigner for a 
king, they could not do better than elect Byron. 
The Poet treated this suggestion lightly, saying, 
" If they make me the offer, I may not. refuse it. 
I shall take care of my own ' sma peculiar ; ' 
for if it don't suit my humour, I shall, like 
Sancho, abdicate." Byron several times alluded 
to this, in a bantering vein ; it left an impres- 
sion on his mind. Had he lived to reach the 
congress of Salona as commissioner of the loan, 
the dispenser of a million silver crowns would 
have been offered a golden one. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 205 

s Our party made an excursion to the neigh- 
bouring island of Ithaca; contrasted with the 
arid wastes and barren red hills of Cephalonia, 
the verdant valleys, sparkling streams, and high 
land, clothed in evergreen shrubs, were strik- 
ingly beautiful. After landing, it was proposed 
to Byron to visit some of the localities that 
antiquaries have dubbed with the titles of 
Homer's school, — Ulysses' stronghold, &c. ; he 
turned peevishly away, saying to me, " Do I 
look like one of those emasculated fogies ? 
Let's have a swim. I detest antiquarian 
twaddle. Do people think I have no lucid 
intervals, that I came to Greece to scribble 
more nonsense ? I will show them I can do 
something better ; I wish I had never written a 
line, to have it cast in my teeth at every turn." 
Brown and Gamba went to look for some place 
where we might pass the night, as we could not 
get mules to go on until the next day. 

After a long swim, Byron clambered up the 
rocks, and, exhausted by his day's work, fell 
asleep under the shade of a wild fig-tree at the 
mouth of a cavern. Gamba, having nothing to 
do, hunted him out, and awakened him from a 
pleasant dream, for which the Poet cursed him. 



206 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

"We fed off figs and olives, and passed our 
night at a goatherd's cottage. 

In the morning we rode through the pleasant 
little island to Vathy, the capital. The Resi- 
dent, Captain Knox, his lady, and every one else 
who had a house, opened their doors to wel- 
come us, and the Pilgrim was received as if he 
had been a prince. On the summit of a high 
mountain in the island, there is an ancient mon- 
astery, from which there is a magnificent view of 
the Ionian Sea, Greece, and many islands. The 
day after our arrival we ascended it, our party 
amounting to ten or twelve, including servants 
and muleteers. As usual, it was late when we 
started ; there was not a breath of air, and the 
heat was intense. Following a narrow zigzag 
path between rocks and precipices in single file, 
as our mules crept upwards our difficulty in- 
creased, until the path became merely stone 
steps, worn by time and travel in the solid lime- 
stone. We all dismounted but Byron ; he was 
jaded and irritable, as he generally was when 
deprived of his accustomed midday siesta ; it 
was dusk before we reached the summit of the 
mountain. The Abbot had been apprised by 
the Resident of our visit ; and when we neared 



LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 207 

the monastery, files of men stood on each side 
of our path, bearing pine torches. On coming 
up to the walls, we saw the monks in their grey- 
gowns, ranged along the terrace ; they chaunted 
a hymn of glorification and welcome to the 
great lord, saying, " Christ has risen to elevate 
the cross and trample on the crescent in our be- 
loved Greece." The Abbot, clad in his sacer- 
dotal robes, received Byron in the porch, and 
conducted him into the great hall, illuminated 
for the occasion ; the monks and others clus- 
tered round the honored guest ; boys swung 
censers with frankincense under the Poet's nose. 
The Abbot, after performing a variety of cere- 
monies in a very dignified manner, took from 
the folds of his ample garments a roll of paper, 
and commenced intoning through his nasal 
organs a turgid and interminable eulogium on 
my " Lordo Inglese," in a polyglot of divers 
tongues ; while the eyes of the silent monks, 
anxious to observe the effect of the holy father's 
eloquence, glanced from the Abbot to the Lord. 
Byron had not spoken a word from the time 
we entered the monkery ; I thought he was re- 
solved to set us an example of proper be- 
haviour. No one was more surprised than I 



208 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

was, when suddenly he burst into a paroxysm 
of rage, and vented his ire in a torrent of 
Italian execrations on the holy Abbot and all 
his brotherhood. Then turning to us with 
flashing eyes, he vehemently exclaimed : 

" Will no one release me from the presence of 
these pestilential idiots ? they drive me mad I " 
Seizing a lamp, he left the room. 

The consternation of the monks at this explo- 
sion of wrath may be imagined. The amazed 
Abbot remained for some time motionless, his 
eyes and mouth wide open ; holding the paper 
he had been reading in the same position, he 
looked at the vacant place left by Byron, and 
then at the door through which he had disap- 
peared. At last he thought he had solved the 
mystery, and in a low tremulous voice said, — 
significantly putting his finger to his forehead : — 

" Eccolo, e matto poveretto I " (Poor fellow, 
he is mad.) 

Leaving Hamilton Brown to pacify the monks, 
I followed Byron. He was still fretting and 
fuming, cursing the " whining dotard," as he 
called the Abbot, who had tormented him. 
Byron's servant brought him bread, wine, and 
olives. I left him and joined the mess of the 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 209 

monks in their refectory. We had the best of 
everything the island produced for supper. Our 
host broached several flasks of his choicest vin- 
tages : but although he partook largely of these 
good things, they failed to cheer him. We were 
all glad to retire early to our cells. 

In the morning, Byron came forth refreshed, 
and acted as if he had forgotten the. occurrences 
of the evening. The Abbot had not, and he 
took care not to remind him of them. A hand- 
some donation was deposited in the alms-box, 
and we mounted our mules and departed, with- 
out any other ceremony than a hasty benediction 
from the Holy Father and his monks. However 
we might have doubted the sincerity of their 
ovation on receiving us, we did not question the 
relief they felt and expressed by their looks on 
our departure. 

The next day we retraced our steps through 
the flowery ravines and tranquil glades of this 
lovely islet, our road winding along the foot of 
the mountains. The grey olive-trees, bright 
gi'een fig, and rampant vine, that grew above 
our heads, screened us from the sun ; the fresh 
breeze from the sea, with the springs of purest 
water gushing out of the rocks, soothed the 

14 



210 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

Poet's temper. He turned out of the path to 
look at a natural grotto, in a grove of forest- 
trees, and said, " You will find nothing in Greece 
or its islands so pleasant as this. If this isle 
were mine, — ^ I would break my staff and bury 
my book.' — What fools we all are ! " 

On reaching our former landing-place, we had 
to wait a long time for a boat to ferry us across 
the strait to Cephalonia. As usual, he and I 
took to the water ; in the evening we crossed, 
and it was night when we regained our old 
quarters on board the ' Hercules.' 

It was near noon of the next day, when I had 
occasion to speak to Byron on pressing business. 
I descended to his cabin, — he was fast asleep. 
I repeatedly called him by name ; at first in a 
low voice, — then louder and louder ; at last he 
started up in terror, staring at me wildly. With 
a convulsive sigh he said, " I have had such a 
dream ! I am trembling with fear. I am not 
fit to go to Greece. If you had come to strangle 
me I could have done nothing. " 

I said, " Who could against a night-mare ? 
the hag don't mind your pistols or your bible," 
(he always had these on a chair close to the side 
of his bed.) I then talked on other subjects 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 211 

until he was tolerably composed, and so left 
him. 

The conflicting accounts that came day by 
day from the Morea distracted us; to ascertain 
the real state of things, I proposed to go there. 
Byron urged me to stay until he went, so I re- 
mained for some time ; but when he talked of 
leaving the ship and taking a house, I deter- 
mined to be off. 



212 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER XX. 

Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, 

There is a moral desert now; 

The mean and miserable huts, 

Conti-asted with those ancient fanes, 

The long and lonely, colonnades, 

Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks. 

Queen Mab. 

I WELL knew that once on shore Byron would 
fall back on his* old routine of dawdling habits, 
plotting — planning — shilly-shallying — and doing 
nothing. It was a maxim of his, " If I am 
stopped for six days at any place, I cannot be 
made to move for six months." 

Hamilton Browne agreed to go with me; he 
was a most valuable ally. In my hasty prepara- 
tions for going, I was tearing up and throwing 
overboard papers and letters. Byron stopped 
me, saying, " Some day you will be sorry for 
this ; they are parts of your life. I have every 
scrap of paper that was ever written to me. 
— letters, notes, — even cards of invitation to 
parties. There are chests-full at Hansom's, 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 213 

Douglas Kinnaird's, and Barry's, at Genoa. 
They will edify my executors." 

" Is this quite fair to your correspondents ? " I 
asked. 

" Yes ; for they have mine and might use 
them against me. Whilst I live they dare not, 
— I can keep them all in order ; when I die and 
my memoirs are published, — my executors can 
verify them by my letters if their truth is ques- 
tioned." " 

I told Byron that two Frenchmen, just landed, 
wished to see him ; I thought they were officers. 
He said, " Ask Hamilton Browne to see what 
they want. I can't express myself like a gentle- 
man in French. I never could learn it, — or 
any thing else according to rule." He even read 
translations of French books in preference to 
the originals. His ignorance of the language 
was the reason that he' avoided Frenchmen and 
was never in France. 

In our voyage from Italy, Byron persuaded 
me to let him have my black servant, as, in the 
East, it is a mark of dignity to have a negro in 
your establishment. He likewise coveted a 
green embroidered military jacket of mine; 
which, as it was too small for me, I gave him ; 



214 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

SO I added considerably to his dignity. I en- 
gaged one of the refugee Zuliotes (or Zodiacs, 
as old Scott, our captain, called them) to go 
with me. He was a vain, lazy, swaggering 
braggart, — sullen and stupid as are most of his 
tribe. 

Byron gave us letters addressed to the Greek 
government, if we could find any such consti- 
tuted authorities, — expressing his readiness to 
serve them when they had satisfied him how 
he could do so, &c., &c., &c. As I took leave 
of him, his last words were, " Let me hear from 
you often, — come back soon? If things are 
farcical, they will do for Don Juan ; if hero- 
ical, you shall have another canto of Child e 
Harold." 

Hamilton Browne and I went on board a 
light boat of the country, called a caique, crossed 
over with a fair wind in the night, and landed 
early the next morning on a sandy beach, at a 
solitary ruined tower near Pyrgos. A dirty 
squad of Moorish mercenaries, quartered at the 
tower, received us ; some of them accompanied 
us to the village of Pyrgos ; where, as we could 
not procure horses or mules, we slept. 

In the morning we commenced our journey to 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 215 

Tripolitza, the capital of the Peloponnesus, 
visiting the military stations on our way. We 
slept at the ruined villages, and were generally 
well received when our mission was known. 
The country is so poor and barren, that but for 
its genial climate it would be barely habitable. 
In the best of times there would not be plenty ; 
but now that war had passed over the land with 
fire and slaughter there was scarcely a vestige 
of habitation or cultivation. 

The only people we met besides soldiers, 
looked like tribes of half-starved gipsies ; over 
our heads, on some towering rock, occasionally 
we saw a shepherd with his long gun, watching 
us, and keeping guard over small flocks of goats 
and sheep, whilst they fed off the scanty shrubs 
that grew in the crevices under them ; they 
were attended too, by packs of the most savage 
dogs I ever saw. Except in considerable force, 
the Greek soldiers dared not meddle with these 
warlike shepherds and their flocks. Many of 
the most distinguished leaders in the war, and 
the bravest of their followers, had been shep- 
herds. 

To compensate for the hard fare and bodily 
privations to be endured, there was ample food 



216 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

for the minds of any who love the haunts of 
genius. Every object we saw was associated 
with some great name, or deed of arts or arms, 
that still live in the memory of all mankind. 
We stopped two or three days at Tripolitza, 
and then passed on to Argos and Napoli di 
Romania ; every step of our way was marked 
by the ravages of the war. On our way to 
Corinth, we passed through the defiles of Der- 
venakia ; our road was a mere mule-path for 
about two leagues, winding along in the bed of 
a brook, flanked by rugged precipices. In this 
gorge, and a more rugged path above it, a large 
Ottoman force, principally cavalry, had been 
stopped, in the previous autumn, by barricades 
of rocks and trees, and slaughtered like droves 
of cattle by the wild and exasperated Greeks. 
It was a perfect picture of the war, and told its 
own story ; the sagacity of the nimble -footed 
Greeks, and the hopeless stupidity of the Turkish 
commanders, were palpable : detached from the 
heaps of dead, we saw the skeletons of some 
bold riders who had attempted to scale the ac- 
clivities, still astride the skeletons of their horses, 
and in the rear, as if in the attempt to back out 
of the fray, the bleached bones of the negroes' 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 217 

hands still holding the hair ropes attached to 
the skulls of their camels — death-like sleep is a 
strange posture-master. There were grouped in 
a narrow space five thousand or more skeletons 
of men, horses, camels, and mules; vultures had 
eaten their flesh, and the sun had bleached their 
bones. In this picture the Turks looked like a 
herd of bisons trapped and butchered in the 
gorges of the rocky mountains. The rest of 
their battles, amidst scenery generally of the 
same rugged character, only differed in their 
magnitude. The Asiatic Turks are lazy, brave, 
and stupid. The Greeks, too crafty to fight if 
they could run, were only formidable in their 
fastnesses. It is a marvel that Greece and 
Greeks should be again resuscitated after so 
many ages of death-like slavery. No people, if 
they retain their name and language, need de- 
spair; " There is nothing constant but muta- 
bility ! " 

We arrived at Corinth a short time after the 
Acrocorinthus had, for the second time, fallen 
into the hands of the insurgents ; and there saw 
Colocotroni and other predatory chiefs. Thence 
we crossed to the Isle of Salamis, and found the 
legislative and executive bodies of the pro- 



218 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

visional government accusing each other of em- 
bezzling the public money. Here, too, we saw 
the most potent leaders of the chief Greek mili- 
tary factions, — Primates, Hydriotes, Mainotes, 
Mareotes, Ipsareotes, Caudeotes, and many 
others, each and all intent on their own imme- 
diate interests. There, too, I saw the first speci- 
mens of the super-subtle Phanariotes, preeminent 
in all evil, reared at Constantinople, and trained 
in the arts of deception by the most adroit pro- 
fessors in the world. These pliant and dexterous 
intriguers glided stealthily from tent to tent and 
from chief to chief, impregnating their brains with 
wily suggestions, thus envenoming their feuds 
and causing universal anarchy. Confounded at 
this exhibition of rank selfishness, we backed out 
of these civil broils, and sailed for Hydra ; one of 
our commissions being to send deputies from 
that island to England to negotiate a loan. 
We speedily accomplished this, and Hamilton 
Browne went to London with the deputies. I 
re-landed in Greece and went to Athens. Odys- 
seus held undisputed sway there and in Eastern 
Greece, the frontiers of the war, and had played 
an important part in the insurrection. De- 
scended from the most renowned race of Klephtes, 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 219 

he was a master of the art of mountain warfare, 
and a thorough Greek in cunning; strong-bodied, 
nimble-footed, and nimble-witted. I bought 
horses, hired soldiers, and accompanied him on 
an expedition to Euboea, then in the hands of 
the Turks ; and under his auspices became fa- 
miliar with many of the most interesting locali- 
ties, — Attica, Marathon, Thebes, Thermopylae, 
Cheronea, Livadia, Talanta, Mount Parnes, 
Find us, and Cythaeron. Our head-quarters were 
on Parnassus. Our ambuscades, onslaughts, 
rock-fighting, forays, stalking Turkish cavalry, 
successes, and failures,'intermingled with confer- 
ences, treaties, squabbles, intrigues, and constant 
change, were exciting at the time : so is deer- 
stalking; so was the Caffre war to those en- 
gaged in it ; but as they are neither edifying 
nor amusing to write nor to read about, I shall 
not record them. In January, 1824, I heard that 
Byron was at Missolonghi ; that a loan was 
about being negotiated in London, and that 
Colonel Stanhope and other English had arrived 
in Athens. I pressed upon Odysseus the neces- 
sity of our instantly returning thither, which 
we did. Shortly after. Stanhope proposed, and 
Odysseus agreed, to hold a congress at Salona, 



220 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

and that I should go to Missolonghi to invite 
Byron and the chiefs of Western Greece to at- 
tend it. I started on my mission with a band 
of followers ; and we had been two days wind- 
ing through the mountain passes, — for nothing 
can induce the Greeks to cross level ground, if 
there are Turks or the rumour of enemies near, 
— when a messenger from Missolonghi on his 
way to Salona, conveying the startling news of 
Bvron's death, crossed our path, as we were 
fording the river Evvenus. Thus, by a stroke of 
fate, my hopes of being of use in Greece were 
extinguished : Byron and Stanhope, as commis- 
sioners of the loan, would have expended it on 
the war ; and the sordid and selfish primates. 
Machiavellian Phanariotes, and lawless Cap- 
tanria would have been held in check. Byron 
thought all men rogues, and put no trust in any. 
As applied to Greeks, his skepticism was perfect 
wisdom. Stanhope was of a frank and hopeful 
nature ; he had carefully examined the state of 
things, and would have been an able coadjutor, 
for he possessed those inestimable qualities, — 
energy, temper, and order — which Byron lacked. 
The first thing Stanhope did, was to establish a 
free press : many opposed this as premature, if 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 221 

not dangerous, but it was of eminent service, 
and the only institution founded at that time 
which struck root deep into the soil. 

Colonel Stanhope gave me the following note 
to Byron, but the Colonel's prophetic warning 
was too late : — 

Salona, 17 April, 1824. 

My dear Lord Byron, 

We are all assembled here with the exception 
of your Lordship and Monsieur Mavrocordato. 
I hope you will both join us ; indeed, after the 
strong pledges given, the President ought to at- 
tend. As for you, you are a sort of Wilberforce, 
a saint whom all parties are endeavouring to 
seduce ; it's a pity that you are not divisible, 
that every prefecture might have a fraction of 
your person. For my own part, I wish to see 
you fairly out of Missolonghi, because your 
health will not stand the climate and the con- 
stant anxiety to which you are there sub- 
jected. 

I shall remain here till we receive your and 
the President's answer ; I mean then to go to 
Egina, Zante, and England. If I can be of any 



222 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

service, you may command my zealous ser- 
vices. 

Once more, I implore you to quit Missolon- 
ghi, and not to sacrifice your health and, per- 
haps, your life in that Bog. 

I am ever your most devoted 

Leicester Stanhope. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 223 



CHAPTER XXL 

Arnold ! — Do you — dare you — 
Taunt me with my born deformity. 

Deformed Transformed. 

With desponding thoughts I entered Misso- 
longhi on the third day from my leaving Salona. 
Any spot on the surface of the earth, or in its 
bowels, that holds out a prospect of gain, you 
will find inhabited ; a morass that will produce 
rice, the crust of a volcano in which the vine 
will grow ; lagunes, in which fish abound, are 
temptations which overcome the terror of pesti- 
lence or death. So I was not surprised at seeing 
Missolonghi, situated as it is on the verge of the 
most dismal swamp I had ever seen. The mar- 
vel was that Byron, prone to fevers, should have 
been induced to land on this mud-bank, and 
stick there for three months shut in by a circle 
of stagnant pools which might be called the 
belt of death. Although it was now the early 
spring, I found most of the strangers suffering 



224 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

from gastric fevers. It was the 24th or 25th of 
April when I arrived ; Byron had died on the 
19th. I waded through the streets, between 
wind and water, to the house he had lived in ; 
it was detached, and on the margin of the shal- 
low slimy sea-waters. For three months this 
house had been besieged, day and night, like a 
bank that has a run upon it. Now that death 
had closed the door, it was as silent as a ceme- 
tery. No one was within the housse but Fletcher, 
of which I was glad. As if he knew my wishes, 
he led me up a narrow stair into a small room, 
with nothing in it but a coffin standing on tres- 
tles. No word was spoken by either of us ; he 
withdrew the black pall and the white shroud, 
and there lay the embalmed body of the Pil- 
grim — more beautiful in death than in life. The 
contraction of the muscles and skin had effaced 
every line that time or passion had ever traced 
on it ; few marble busts could have matched its 
stainless white, the harmony of its proportions, 
and perfect finish ; yet he had been dissatisfied 
with that body, and longed to cast its slough. 
How often I had heard him curse it ! He was 
jealous of the genius of Shakspeare — ^that might 
well be — but where had he seen the face or form 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 225 

worthy to excite his envy ? I asked Fletcher to 
bring me a glass of water. On his leaving the 
room, to confirm or remove my doubts as to the 
cause of his lameness, I uncovered the Pilgrim's 
feet, and was answered — the great mystery was 
solved. Both his feet were clubbed, and his 
legs withered to the knee — the form and fea- 
tures of an Apollo, with the feet and legs of a 
sylvan satyr. This was a curse, chaining a 
proud and soaring spirit like his to the dull earth. 
In the drama of ' The Deformed Transformed,' 
I knew that he had expressed all he could ex- 
press of what a man of highly-wrought mind 
might feel when brooding over a deformity of 
body : but when he said 

" I have done the best which spirit may to make 
Its way with all deformity, dull deadly, 
Discouraging weight upon me," 

I thought it exaggerated as applied to himself, 
now I saw it was not so. His deformity was 
always uppermost in his thoughts, and influ- 
enced every act of his life, spurred him on to 
poetry, as that was one of the few paths to fame 
open to him, — and as if to be revenged on Na- 
ture for sending him into the world " scarce half 
16 



226 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

made up," he scoffed at her works and traditions 
with the pride of Lucifer ; this morbid feeling 
ultimately goaded him on to his last Quixotic 
crusade in Greece. 

No other man, afflicted as he was, could have 
been better justified than Byron in saying, 

" I ask not 
For valour, since deformity is daring ; 
It is its essence to o'ertake mankind 
By heart and soul, and make itself the equal — 
Ay, the superior of the rest. There is 
A spur in its halt movements, to become 
All that the others cannot, in such things 
As still are free to both, to compensate 
For step-dame Nature's niggardness at first; 
They war with fearless deeds, the smiles of fortune, 
And oft, like Timour the lame Tartar, win them." . 

Knowing and sympathizing with Byron's sen- 
sitiveness, his associates avoided prying into the 
cause of his lameness; so did strangers, from 
good breeding or common humanity. It was 
generally thought his halting gait originated in 
some defect of the right foot or ankle — the right 
foot was the most distorted, and it had been 
made worse in his boyhood by vain efforts to set 
it right. He told me that for several years he 
wore steel splints, which so wrenched the sinews 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AJ^D BYRON. 227 

and tendons of his leg, that they increased his 
lameness ; the foot was twisted inwards, only 
the edge touched the ground, and that leg was 
shorter than the other. His shoes were peculiar 
— very high heeled, with the soles uncommonly 
thick on the inside and pared thin on the out- 
side — the toes were stuffed with cotton-wool, 
and his trousers were very large below the knee 
and strapped down so as to cover his feet. The 
peculiarity of his gait was now accounted for ; 
he entered a room with a sort of run, as if he 
could not stop, then planted his best leg well 
forward, throwing back his body to keep his 
balance. In early life whilst his frame was light 
and elastic, with the aid of a stick he might 
have tottered along for a mile or two ; but after 
he had waxed heavier, he seldom attempted to 
walk more than a few hundred yards, without 
squatting down or leaning against the first wall, 
bank, rock, or tree at hand, never sitting on the 
ground, as it would have been difficult for him 
to get up again. In the company of strangers, 
occasionally, he would make desperate efforts to 
conceal his infirmity, but the hectic flush on his 
face, his swelling veins, and quivering nerves 
betrayed him, and he suffered for many days 



228 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

after such exertions. Disposed to fatten, in- 
capable of taking exercise to check the tendency, 
what could he do ? If he added to his weight, 
his feet would not have supported him ; in this 
dilemma he was compelled to exist in a state of 
semi-starvation ; he was less than eleven stone 
when at Genoa, and said he had been fourteen 
at Venice. The pangs of hunger which trav- 
ellers and shipwrecked mariners have described 
were nothing to what he suffered ; their priva- 
tions were temporary, his were for life, and more 
unendurable, as he was in the midst of abun- 
dance. I was exclaiming, " Poor fellow, if your 
errors were greater than those of ordinary men, 
so were your temptations and provocations," 
when Fletcher returned with a bottle and glass, 
saying, " There is nothing but slimy salt water 
in this horrid place, so I have been half over the 
town to beg this bottle of porter," and, answer- 
ing my ejaculation of " Poor fellow? " he said — 

" You may well say so, sir, these savages are 
worse than any highwaymen ; they have robbed 
my Lord of all his money and his life too." 

Whilst saying this, Fletcher, without making 
any remark, drew the shroud and pall carefully 
over the feet of his master's corpse — he was 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 229 

very nervous and trembled as he did it; so 
strongly had his weak and superstitious nature 
been acted upon by the injunctions and threats 
of his master, that, alive or dead, no one was to 
see his feet, for if they did, he would haunt 
him, &c. &c. 

Fletcher gave me a sheet of paper, and from 
his dictation I wrote on Byron's coffin the par- 
ticulars of his last illness and death. This ac- 
count differs in many particulars fro*m the one 
already published; in the same way that the 
fresh rough notes of an eye-witness, taken on 
the spot, differ on passing through the hands 
of the editor of a review to be served out to 
the public as an article to serve a cause or 
strengthen a faction — so let it be, I shall not 
question it. 

A letter from his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, 
was on his writing-table. This lady was the 
only relation Byron had, or at least acknowl- 
edged ; and he always spoke of her in the most 
affectionate terms. He was in the act of writing 
to her when he was taken ill. This unfinished 
letter I copied, — as the original would run many 
risks of being lost before it reached its destina- 
tion. It is interesting as the last of Byron's 



230 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

writings — as an index, too, of his real and in- 
ward feelings ; those letters that have been pub- 
lished were written, as I have already observed, 
under an assumed character and for effect. 

His sister's letter contained a long transcript 
of one from Lady Byron ; with a minute mental 
and physical account of their child, Ada. Lady 
Byron's letter mentioned a profile of the child. 
I found it, with other tokens that the Pilgrim 
had most treasured, scattered on the floor, — as 
rubbish of no marketable value, and trampled 
on. I rescued from destruction a cambric hand- 
kerchief stained with his blood, and marked with 
a lady's name in hair ; a ringlet ; a ribbon ; and 
a small glove. These relics I folded up with 
some of his own hair that I had shorn from his 
head. 

This unfinished letter was the last of Byron's 
writings ; it is to his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. 

MissohngU, Feb. 23, 1824. 

My dearest Augusta, 
I received a few days ago, your and Lady B.'s 
report of Ada's health, with other letters from 
England ; for which I ought to be, and am (I 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AXD BYRON. 231 

hope) sufficiently thankful, as they are of great 
comfort, and I wanted some, having been recently 
unwell — but am now much better, so that you 
must not be alarmed. 

You will have heard of our journeys and 
escapes, and so forth, — perhaps with some ex- 
aggeration ; but it is all very well now, and I 
have been some time in Greece, which is in as 
good a state as could be expected considering 
circumstances. But I will not plague you with 
politics — wars — or earthquakes, though we have 
had a rather smart one three nights ago, which 
produced a scene ridiculous enough, as no dam- 
age was done, except to those who stuck fast in 
the scuffle to get first out of the doors or win- 
dows ; amongst whom, some recent importations 
from England, who had been used to quieter 
elements, were rather squeezed in the press for 
precedence. 

I have been obtaining the release of about 
nine-and-twenty Turkish prisoners, — men, wo- 
men, and children, and have sent them, at my 
own expense, home to their friends ; but one 
pretty little girl of nine years of age named Hato 
or Hatagee, has expressed a strong wish to re- 
main with me or under my care ; — and I have 



232 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

nearly determined to adopt her, if I thought that 
Lady B. would let her come to England as a 
companion to Ada (they are about the same 
age), and we could easily provide for her, — if not, 
I can send her to Italy for education. She is 
very lively and quick, and with great black 
Oriental eyes and Asiatic features. All her 
brothers w^ere killed in the revolution. Her 
mother wishes to return to her husband, who is 
at Previsa ; but says that she would rather en- 
trust the child to me in the present state of the 
country. Her extreme youth and sex have 
hitherto saved her life, but there is no saying 
what might happen in the course of the war 
(and of such a war). I shall probably commit her 
to the care of some English lady in the islands 
for the present. The child herself has the same 
wish, and seems to have a decided character for 
her age. You can mention this matter, if you 
think it worth while. 1 merely wish her to be 
respectably educated and treated ; and if my years 
and all things be considered,^! presume it would 
be difficult to conceive me to have any other 
views. 

With regard to Ada's health, I am glad to 
hear that she is so much better ; but I think it 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 233 

right that Lady B. should be informed and guard 
against it accordingly ; that her description of 
much of her disposition and tendencies very 
nearly resemble that of my own at a similar 
age, — except that I was much more impetuous. 
Her preference of prose (strange as it may now 
seem) was^ and indeed is^ mine (for I hate read- 
ing verse — and always did) ; and I never in- 
vented any thing but ' boats, — ships,' and gener- 
ally something relative to the ocean. I showed 
the report to Colonel Stanhope, who v^as struck 
with the resemblance of parts of it to the pater- 
nal line, — even now. 

But it is also fit, though unpleasant, that I 
should mention, — that my recent attack, and a 
very severe one, — had a strong appearance of 
epilepsy ; — why, I know not — for it is late in 
life. Its first appearance at thirty-six, and, so 
far as I know, it is not hereditary ; and it is that 
it may not become so, that you should tell Lady 
B. to take some precautions in the case of Ada. 

My attack has not returned, — and I am fight- 
ing it off with abstinence and exercise, and thus 
far with success; — if merely casual, it is all 
very well 

Gordon, in his ' History of the Greek Revo- 



234 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

lution,' speaking of Byron just before his death 
says: "His health declined, and we cannot be 
surprised, considering what he had suffered, and 
was daily suffering, from the deceptions prac- 
tised upon him, and importunate solicitations 
for money. Parry talked a great deal and did 
little ; Mavrocordato promised every thing, and 
performed nothing, and the primates, who en- 
gaged to furnish 1500 dollars towards the ex- 
penses of the fortifications, could not produce 
a farthing, and in lieu thereof presented him 
with the freedom of the town. The streets and 
country were a bed of mire, so he could not 
take any exercise out of doors." 

To return to what passed in Byron's house. 
On hearing a noise below, I went down into 
the public room, and found Parry with a com- 
rade carousing. This man (Parry) had been a 
clerk in the civil department of the Ordnance 
at Woolwich, and was sent out by the com- 
mittee with the munitions of war, as head fire- 
master. In revolutions, however severely the 
body may suffer for want of pay and rations, 
your vanity is pampered to satiety by the as- 
sumption of whatever rank or title you may 
have a fancy for. Mavrocordato dubbed him- 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 235 

self Prince ; Byron, Comnriander-in-chief ; Parry, 
the ordnance clerk. Major. 

I said, " Well, major, what do you think was 
the cause of Lord Byron's death ? " 

" Think ? I don't think any thing about it ; 
I am a practical man, not a humbugging 
thinker; he would have been alive now if he 
had followed my advice. He lived too low : 
I told him so a thousand times. Two or 
three days before he slipped his wind, he said : 
* Parry, what do you think is the matter with 
me, the doctors don't know my complaint ? ' 
No, I said, nor nothing else, my lord; let me 
throw them out of the window. ' What will 
do me good. Parry ? ' Brandy, my lord ; nothing 
but brandy will save you ; you have only got a 
chill on an empty stomach ; let me mix you a 
stiff glass of grog, and you will be all right 
to-morrow, but he shook his head, so I gave 
him up as a lost man. My father," he con- 
tinued, " lived to a great age on brandy, and 
then he would not have died, but the doctor 
stopped his drink, and the death-rattle choked 
his scuppers." 

" What did the doctors do. Parry, with Lord 
Byron ? " 



236 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

" Do ! why they physicked and bled him to 
death. My lord called them assassins to their 
faces, and so they are. A pair of more con- 
ceited, ignorant scamps I never saw ; they are 
only fit to stand at the corners of alleys to 
distribute Doctor Eady's hand-bills." 

The fire-master was a rough burly fellow, 
never quite sober, but he was no fool, and had 
a fund of pot-house stories, which he told in 
appropriately slang language ; he was a mimic, 
and amused Byron by burlesquing Jeremy 
Bentham and other members of the Greek 
committee. Besides these accomplishments, he 
professed a thorough knowledge of the art of 
fortification, and said he was the inventor of 
shells and fire-balls that would destroy the Ot- 
toman fleet and the garrison of Lepanto. All 
he did, however, was to talk and drink. He 
was three months in Greece, returned to Eng- 
land, talked the committee out of 400/. for his 
services, and drank himself into a madhouse. 
When he could get no more brandy to keep 
down the death-rattle, he died as he said his 
father had done. Six artificers, whom he 
brought to Greece with him, staid there only 
a fortnight, and cost the committee 340/, 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 237 

Out of the first loan of 800,000/., negotiated 
in England, the Greeks got 240,000/. The 
money Byron advanced by way of loan was 
repaid by the Greeks ; but I believe it was in- 
vested in the Greek loan, and so lost. 



238 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 



CHAPTER XXII. 

When a man halli no freedom to fight for at home, 
Let him combat for that of his neighbours ; 

Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome, 
And get knock' d on the head for his labours. 

Don Juan. 

Early in the morning Gamba and I looked 
over Byron's papers ; there were several journals 
and note-books; they contained memorandums 
of his thoughts, not of his actions — violent in- 
vectives on the Zuliotes and others. — Italian 
and English letters, fifteen stanzas of the seven- 
teenth canto of ' Don Juan, ' dated 8th May, 
several songs finished, and sundry beginnings of 
poems, his opinions of Napoleon's banishment, 
continuations of ' Childe Harold,' and the ' De- 
formed Transformed,' and other fragments. Mav- 
rocordato came in ; finally we sealed up every- 
thing. The 30 or 40,000 dollars which Byron 
had brought with him to Missolonghi were re- 
duced to 5,000 or 6,000. Mavrocordato urged 
that this sum should be left with him as a loan, 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 239 

and that he would be responsible for its repay- 
ment. I objected to this as illegal, and insisted 
on the money being shipped to the Ionian Is- 
lands. The prince was exceedingly put out at 
this ; he evidently thought my scruples arose 
from no other motive than personal enmity to 
him. The congress at Salona he considered a 
scheme of mine to get Byron out of his hands, 
and to deliver him, Mavrocordato, into the 
clutches of Odysseus, and he was in great 
terror of that c"hief. These things I could see 
engendered in his mind a deadly hatred of me. 
After the consummate art which this prince of 
Phanariotes had displayed in inveigling Byron 
and his dollars into Missolonghi, he looked upon 
him as a lawful prize, and on my efforts to 
rescue his victim as the height of audacity. I 
had no enmity to the prince, but I had a strong 
feeling of good will towards Byron ; and never 
lost sight of his interest. To be brief, my plan 
had been simply this, to get Byron to Athens ; 
Odysseus, whose confidence I had won, engaged 
to deliver up the Acropolis of that city, to put 
the said fortress into my hands the instant Byron 
promised to come there, and to allow me to gar- 
rison it with my own people and hold it ; with 



240 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

no other condition than that of not giving it up 
to the Greek government as at the time consti- 
tuted. There the poet would have been in his 
glory ; he loved Athens. In that fortress with a 
Frank garrison he would have been thoroughly 
independent ; he would have been safe from 
fevers, for it is the healthiest site in the world, 
as well as the most beautiful. If the Greeks 
succeeded in raising a loan, and he was appoint- 
ed to control its expenditure, at Athens he would 
have been in a commanding position : aloof from 
the sordid civil and military factions, he might 
have controlled them — Byron was no soldier : 

" Nor the division of a battle knew more than a spinster." 

To carry on the war a disciplined army and 
an able general were indispensable. Sir C. J. 
Napier was the man exactly fitted for such an 
emergency ; skilful, fearless, prompt, and decided 
as fate. The deep interest that great soldier felt 
in the cause of the Greeks was such, that he 
would have undertaken the war, although it 
would have cost him his commission in the 
British service, if solicited by the proper authori- 
ties, and furnished with sufficient means and 
power. When Byron was on his death-bed, and 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 241 

wandering in his mind, Napier was uppermost 
in his thoughts ; he cursed the mercenary and 
turbulent Zuliotes, exclaiming : " When Napier 
comes, I will have them all flayed alive. " 

In one of my visits to Cephalonia, expressly 
to inform Napier of the state of anarchy in 
Greece, I told him the first duty he would have 
to perform would be that of shooting and im- 
prisoning half-a-dozen of the most refractory of 
the leaders of factions, as well as of the Cap- 
tanria. 

" No, " he said, " you shall do that ; you shall 
be Provost Marshal. If I go there, we will 
raise the price of hemp ; and I won't go with- 
out two European regiments, money in hand to 
pay them, and a portable gallows." 

" I will accept the ofiice, and do my duty," I 
answered. 

To resume my story. After I had seen Byron's 
effects despatched to Zante, I left Missolonghi to 
return to Salona. Many of the foreign soldiers 
who had been in Byron's pay, now that pay was 
stopped, volunteered to join me. I engaged as 
many as I could afford to keep. I had, likewise, 
five brass guns, with ammunition, and some 
other things sent out by the English committee, 

16 



242 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

which I was authorized to take to Eastern 
Greece. Mavrocordato opposed this order, — 
but I enforced it ; so that I had now a cavalcade 
of fifty or sixty horses and mules, and about a 
hundred men, including the E-oumeliotes whom 
I had brought with me. In all my motley squad 
there was only one who spoke English, and he 
was a Scot. It would have been better had I 
omitted that one. When I arrived at Salona, I 
found Stanhope and a host of others who had 
come to meet Byron. Stanhope had received 
a letter from the Horse Guards ordering him 
home. 

I had now no motive for remaining in Greece. 
The Greeks were jealous of foreigners ; those 
who had not money wandered about in rags 
and wretchedness, although many of them 
were very able soldiers, and had greatly 
distinguished themselves. But I did not like 
deserting Odysseus; he was very anxious I 
should stay. He said : " The Greeks were 
naturally treacherous, artful, sordid, and fickle ; 
and that history and tradition proved they had 
always been so." 

The congress dispersed. I returned with 
Odysseus into Livadia, and we revisited Athens 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 243 

and Euboea, — carrying on the war in the same 
inefficient and desultory way as before, un- 
aided by the government and abandoned to our 
own resources. Hitherto the military chiefs 
held all the real power in Greece ; the territory 
they wrested from the Turks they considered as 
lawful prize ; in short, they acted on 

" The good old rule, the simple plan, 
That the): should take who have the power. 
And they should keep who can." 

As to the government it was a mere farce, 
but its members knew it might one day become 
a reality. Their chief occupation consisted in 
raising money from those few spots not pre- 
viously ravaged by the ruthless soldiers. The 
insignificant revenue thus raised they appro- 
priated to their own uses. 

They were now assembled at Nauplia. An 
English vessel arrived in that port with 40,000/. 
assigned to them, — this being the first instal- 
ment of the Greek loan. The rush to the dig- 
gings in California and Australia, on the first 
discovery of gold in those regions, was partial, 
if not orderly, as compared with the wild and 
universal rush of the Greeks on Nauplia. That 
town was beleaguered by armed legions of rob- 



244 RECOLLECTIONS OP THE 

bers frantically clamouring for their share of the 
spoil. Their military leaders soon found, not 
only that they should get no money, but that 
they were in imminent peril of losing their 
heads. 

The government determined to rule with a 
strong hand, and to crush their military rivals. 
They commenced organizing a force and in- 
veigling the men from their chiefs; they at- 
tempted to assassinate Odysseus, and were 
plotting to seize the great Moreote chieftain, 
Colocotroni, — so the great captains fled to their 
mountain strongholds. The government ulti- 
mately arrested Colocotroni and many others. 

I remained with a hundred men between 
Livadia and Mount Parnes. Odysseus joined 
me there, and gave me an account of the state 
of things at Nauplia. 

He said : '^ By stratagem and force, with my 
own sjnall means, I have kept the Turks out of 
the Morea for three years without aid from the 
government. The territory we captains have 
dispossessed the Sultan of, our self-elected gov- 
ernment have sold to the Russians; and with 
the money they are to get rid of us, to make 
way for a foreign king and foreign soldiers." 

I asked, " What king ? " 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 245 

He said, they were " divided on that subject, 
but the Russian party was the strongest, for 
they had the priests, the Phanariotes and More- 
otes, with them ; but," he added, " what puzzles 
me is, that England should advance money to 
make Greece a hospodariot of Russia. I never 
met any Greek who could understand the rea- 
son why so shrewd a nation of traffickers as the 
English should lend them such large sums of 
money, since every one must know, they said, 
that they neither could nor would repay any 
portion of it." 

I urged Odysseus to resign his command, 
and with a few followers to retire to the moun- 
tains — adding that " borrowed money in the 
hands of a knavish government would soon 
vanish." 

Odysseus said, " This part of the country, 
Livadia, my father inherited from his father, 
who won it by his valour, and when it was lost 
through the treachery of the Venetians, who 
sold my father to the Sultan, I regained it by 
my wits, and have kept it with my sword." 

" And so you may again, if you are dispos- 
sessed now," I answered, " if you bide your 
time." 



246 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

How can a soldier, with nothing but his sword, 
defend himself against infernal machinations de- 
vised by a Prince of Hell, armed with a chest 
of gold? Phanariotes, like devils, work in the 
dark! 

In one of the precipices of Mount Parnassus, 
in Livadia, the highest mountain in Greece, 
there is a cavern, at an elevation of a thousand 
feet above the plain. This cavern Odysseus, 
had, with great ingenuity, managed to ascend, 
and convert into a place of safety for his family 
and effects during the war. The only access to 
it was by ladders, bolted to the rock. The first 
ladder, forty-five or fifty feet in length, was 
placed against the face of the rock, and steadied 
by braces ; a second, resting on a projecting 
crag, crossed the first ; and a third, lighter and 
shorter, stood on its heel on a natural shelf in 
the fractured stone. This third ladder led to a 
trap-door ; the bolts and bars of which being 
removed, you entered a vaulted guard-room, 
pierced with lancet-holes for musketry. This 
opened on a broad terrace, sixty feet in length, 
screened by a substantial parapet-wall, breast- 
high, with embrasures mounted with cannon. 
The height of the natural arch spanning the 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 247 

cave is thirty feet above this lower terrace, so 
that it is particularly light, airy, and cheerful, 
commanding extensive and magnificent views. 
Ascending by steps to a yet higher terrace of 
solid rock, the breadth and height of the cave 
diminishes, until the end is reached. On the 
right of the great cave there is a smaller one ; 
besides which there are many small grottoes, the 
size of chambers, connected by galleries. They 
are perfectly dry, and were used for store-rooms 
and magazines. One of them I converted into 
a chapel for an old priest, covering the rugged 
walls with gaudy hangings, flaming paintings, 
and holy relics of saints, saved from the dese- 
crated churches in the neighbourhood. . 

The interior of this magnificent cavern often 
reminded me, with its grottoes, galleries, and 
vaulted roof, of a cathedral, particularly when 
the softened light of the evening obscured its 
ruggedness, or by moonlight. The towering 
mass of rock above the cave projected boldly 
over its base. To make it perfect, there was a 
never-failing supply of the purest water, which 
found its way through subterranean channels 
from the regions of perpetual snow, filtering 
through fractures in the rock above into a 
capacious cistern built on the upper terrace. 



248 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

This cavern was our citadel, and by removing 
the upper ladder became impregnable without 
the aid of a garrison. We built boarded houses 
within it, and stored it with all the necessaries 
and many of the luxuries of life, besides im- 
mense supplies of arms and ammunition. 

I urged Odysseus to abide in this stronghold, 
saying that the borrowed money was sure to be 
embezzled by a government composed of arrant 
sharpers ; and that but a small part of it would 
be applied to the purpose it was contracted for. 
Besides, Ibrahim Pasha was on his way to 
Greece with an immense force. Civil wars 
were already rife in the Morea. " The Greeks," 
I continued, " and their country are so admir- 
ably adapted for guerilla warfare, that those 
chiefs who had carried on the insurrection suc- 
cessfully, and had shown that they alone had 
capacity to continue it, must be recalled from 
banishment to defend their country. Then you 
can retaliate on the government by demanding 
an account of their stewardship." 

" I did expose their frauds to their faces," ex- 
claimed the chief, " in the National Assembly at 
Nauplia, and on the same night two shots were 
fired at me from a window opposite to the one 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 249 

I was sitting at. My guards seized the mis- 
creants, and I gave them up to the police, but 
they were not punished. If I stay here, we 
shall be beleaguered by assassins, and prevented 
from communicating with my lieutenants and 
followers. Ghouras still holds the Acropolis of 
Athens. I cannot stay here ; a stag at bay is 
more to be feared than a lion blockaded in his 
den." 

It was decided that I should remain, and he 
go forth. I had shared in his prosperity, and 
would not leave him in his adversity. As a 
garrison was superfluous, I reduced mine to 
half-a-dozen. To guard against treachery, I 
chose men of different countries, who were not 
likely to conspire together : a Greek, Turk, 
Hungarian, and Italian, a venerable priest, and 
two Greek boys as servants. 

Our other inmates were the chief's son, an 
infant, his wife, mother, and two or three other 
women. I entrusted the keys of the entrance to 
the Albanian Turk, a resolute determined fellow. 
In the mountains of Pindus and Agrafa, in 
Thessalia, they have the noblest breed of dogs 
in the world. In size and strength they are not 
much inferior to the king of beasts, and in 



250 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

courage and sagacity they are superior. When 
thorough-bred and well trained they are held in 
such estimation by their owners, that money 
will not buy them. We had one of these. He 
did the duty of a guard of soldiers, patrolling 
the lower terrace at night, and keeping watch at 
the guard-room door by day. He would not 
enter a room. He was best pleased in the win- 
ter snow-storms, when the icicles hung on his 
long brindled hair and shaggy mane. It was 
impossible to elude his vigilance or corrupt his 
fidelity ; he would not take food from any other 
hands than mine or the Albanian's, and could 
not be bribed. This is more than I could say 
of any Greek that I had dealings with, during 
the three years I lived amongst them. 

In addition to the small number within the 
cave, I had a much larger force at the foot of 
the ladders. They were hutted within a stone 
breast-work. I gave the command of them to 
the Scotchman whom I had brought from Mis- 
solonghi. Their duty was to patrol the passes 
of the mountain, to collect the tithes or tribute 
from the neighbouring villages (these were paid 
in kind), to learn the news, and to keep up my 
correspondence with the chief and others. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 251 

The name of the Scotchman was Fenton. 
Thomas was, I think, his Christian name. He 
introduced himself to me, as I have before nar- 
rated, on my visit to Western Greece, saying he 
had come out expressly to join Lord Byron's 
regiment; that he had served in the civil wars 
in Spain, was skilled in guerilla warfare, that his 
funds were exhausted, and, as I was proceeding 
to the war, he begged me to take him with me. 

I pointed out the deplorable condition of for- 
eigners in Greece generally, and the peculiar 
state of things in that part of the country I was 
going to in particular, and offered to advance 
him money to return home. As he persisted in 
his wish to go with me, I reluctantly yielded to 
his importunity. 

He was a tall, bony man, with prominent 
eyes and features, dark hair, and long face, in 
the prime of life, thirty-one or thirty-two years 
of age. His dress, accoutrements, and arms 
were all well chosen. He was restless, ener- 
getic, enterprising, and a famous walker. Dur- 
ing the time he was with me I sent him on 
many missions to the Ionian Islands for money, 
to the seat of government to see what they were 
doing, and with letters to friendly chiefs, so that 



252 RECOLLECTIONS OP THE 

he was not much at the cave ; and when he was, 
he lived in a hut below it. I supplied him with 
all he wanted — my purse was his. He was not 
squeamish on these points, but sensual, and de- 
nied himself nothing within his reach. When 
in my neighbourhood, he passed most of his 
time with me. No querulous word or angry 
glance ever ruffled our friendly intercourse. I 
thought him honest, and his staying with me a 
proof of his good-will, if not personal friendship, 
and never omitted an occasion of doing him a 
service. 

When Odysseus had been absent three or 
four months, rumours reached me in January, 
1825, that the government were resolved to de- 
prive the chief of his command in Eastern 
Greece. To do this effectually, they were en- 
deavouring to detach his lieutenant, Ghouras, 
who held Attica, from him. I despatched Fen- 
ton to Athens and Nauplia, to ascertain the 
truth of these reports. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 253 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

"Another proudly clad 
In golden arms, spurs a Tartarian barb 
Into the gap, and with his iron mace 
Directs the torrent of that tide of men." 

Hellas — Shel ley. 

I WAS told some time after this that Odys- 
seus was corresponding with Omer Pasha of 
Negropont, and fearing that he might resort 
to some desperate measures in his present diffi- 
culties, I left the cave one night in a snow- 
storm, and with a trusty follower who knew 
the country, we descended to the plain, thread- 
ing our way through the rocks and pine trees. 
We mounted two swift Arab horses, galloped 
along a hollow valley, crossed a deep stream, 
the Sperchius, and proceeded towards the town 
of Livadia, where we arrived the next day. I 
was surprised to see Turkish Delhi cavalry, 
known at a great distance by the immense 
height of their head-gear, careering on the plain. 
On meeting Odysseus, he told me he had made 
a truce for three months with Omer Pasha. 



254 RECOLLECTIONS OP THE 

The only stipulation between them was that, 
for that period, Eastern Greece was to be a 
neutral territory — he said, " It is the only way 
in which I could save the people from being 
massacred. I have written to the Athenians to 
say that, as the government have not only re- 
fused to give me rations or money for my 
troops, but are doing their utmost to induce 
them to desert me, I cannot longer defend the 
passes which lead to Athens." 

I knew it was a common practice of the mili- 
tary leaders in Greece to make treaties with 
the enemy in the provinces they governed, for 
especial objects, on their own responsibility — yet 
I saw at once the chief had made a fatal error 
in doing so on the present occasion. I told 
him that, although his family had ruled in 
Livadia for three generations, the Turks in the 
Morea had been dispossessed after four cen- 
turies of possession ; that now the Greek gov- 
ernment were strong, and would direct all their 
forces to crush him. If he took refuge with 
the Turks, they would betray him, and send 
him or his head to Constantinople. " I know 
that," he answered, " I shall take care of that ; 
they are in my power; what I have done, is 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 255 

only to bring the Greek government to terms." 
I saw that he was anxious and perplexed, and 
that he repented of the step he had taken, and 
had been plotting to extricate himself before I 
arrived at Livadia. The next day we went to 
Thebes, and on the one succeeding followed the 
line of the Eubqpan Strait to Talanta. 

The hollowness of this armistice was appar- 
ent — Odysseus and the Ottoman Bey, suspect- 
ing each other of treachery, used every precau- 
tion to avoid being ensnared. The Turkish 
horse stuck to the level ground, the Greeks 
clung to the hills ; Odysseus skirted them, his 
best men and swiftest runners dogging his 
steps, and keeping him from being cut off from 
his guerillas. 

The Delhi Colonel was selected from the 
Turkish host at Euboea, as the only soldier 
capable of contending in arts or arms with the 
wily and able Greek chief: he was the best 
specimen of an Eastern warrior I had seen, — 
calm, vigilant, and dexterous in the disposition 
of his troopers. Our chief knew the country 
better than any man in it. I urged him to give 
the enemy the slip, and to come to the cavern. 
His answer was, " Stay, not yet ! " 



256 RECOLLECTIONS OP THE 

It was early in February we stopped at Ta- 
lanta on a wet stormy night: in selecting his 
quarters, our chief, with his usual sagacity, 
fixed upon the ruins of a Greek church, situated 
as the Greek churches, chapels, and monasteries 
usually are, on an elevated and defensible site — 
the town was abandoned and in ruins. After 
we had supped and were smoking our pipes, 
some of the Greek patrols came in, saying they 
had captured two Franks. They were ordered 
to bring them in. I told the chief to make no 
allusion to me, but to question them through 
his secretary. 

As they entered, one of them observed to bis 
comrade in English, " What a set of cut-thoats ! 
Are they Greeks or Turks ? " 

" Mind what you say." 

" Oh I they only want our money," answered 
the other. " I hope they will give us some- 
thing to eat before they cut our throats. I am 
famished." 

Certainly appearances were against us. At 
one end of the building, Odysseus, the Greek 
chief, the Turkish Bey, and I sat smoking our 
pipes. At the other end, within the church, 
stood our horses saddled, ready for mounting. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 257 

the soldiers lying down in clusters along the 
sides, with all their gear on, for neither Greeks 
nor Turks divest themselves of a single article 
of dress or arms during the night. Their hands 
still grasped their weapons, and they slept so 
lightly that if in talking a voice was raised, 
their eager wolfish eyes were instantly upon 
the speaker. On the strangers entering, some 
of the soldiers sprang up, others leant on their 
elbow^s to listen or rather to look on, for they 
could • not understand a word. The travellers 
told their story, — stating that they were last 
from Smyrna, and had landed that morning 
from an English brig, at a small port in the 
Gulf of Euboea, with no other object than to 
see the country. Neither of the chiefs believed 
them, nor did I ; nevertheless, they were treated 
hospitably, had supper, coffee, and pipes, and 
their baggage placed beside them. They sat 
together in a spare corner close to us, with no 
arms but fowling-pieces. One of them was 
very ill at his ease, the other, w4io I learnt, from 
their discourse, was a major, took things as 
coolly as if he had been at an inn, said the cold 
lamb (it was goat) was the best he had ever 
tasted, and asked the Greek attendant, if he 

17 



258 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

had no rackie (spirit), the only Romaic word he 
had learnt. Odysseus, understanding what he 
wanted, told the boy to give him wine. 

" If they are robbers," exclaimed the major, 
" they are damned good fellows, so I drink suc- 
cess to their next foray." Soon after, one of 
them lay down in a dark corner. Turks, Greeks, 
and all Orientals, consider it the greatest possible 
insult as well as an outrage on decency, for any 
one in public to change his garments or expose 
any part of his person below the waist. The 
major was a remarkably tall, gaunt, bony man : 
after finishing his wine, he set to work to make 
up a comfortable bed with horse-cloths, slips of 
carpet, a bag for a pillow, &c. ; when he had 
done this to his satisfaction, we supposed he 
would lie down, as his companion had done. 
On the contrary, he deliberately, as if in his 
own barrack-room, utterly regardless of our 
presence, took off his boots, socks, coat, waist- 
coat, trousers, and shirt, folding each article 
carefully up and placing it by his bedside. Thus 
exhibiting himself in all possible attitudes stark 
naked, he leisurely filled the bowl of his Turkish 
pipe, and advanced towards us to light it at the 
fire. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 259 

The two chiefs at first looked on the major's 
novel proceedings with curiosity, as visitors in 
the Zoological Gardens do at the hippopotamus; 
but as the process of stripping advanced, they 
looked serious ; the shirt scene took away their 
breath ; their pipes went out when the major 
advanced towards them. The Turk started up 
in horror with his hand on his sword. The ma- 
jor, supposing he was making way for him from 
civility, and unconscious of giving any offence 
made a very polite bow to us generally ; and, in 
a gentle and conciliating tone, said, in his own 
language, " Pray, gentlemen, keep your seats, 
don't let me disturb you ; " bent his body into a 
sharp angle, so as to draw a light from the burn- 
ing embers. The position he stood in was so 
ludicrous, that Odysseus and I could not resist 
laughing. The major considering this a token 
of good fellowship, insisted on shaking hands 
Avith us, saying, " I am sure you are both good 
fellows — Good-night ! " 

I now saw by the light of the fire that he was 
not absolutely naked, for he had a leather waist- 
coat and drawers on, but they fitted as tight as 
his skin, and were exactly of the same colour. 
The major lay down and smoked himself to 



260 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

sleep. Odysseus went out and brought back 
the Turkish bey. 

Expecting to be surprised by Turks or Greeks, 
and distrusting those with us, we could not 
sleep ; so our chief, to conceal his own anxiety, 
and to wile away the time, recounted to the 
Turk the marvellous things he had seen done at 
Yanina by the Franks whilst he was serving 
with Ali Pasha. Odysseus then questioned the 
Osmanlee about Paradise and Mahomet, very 
profanely. The Albanian Turks are by no 
means bigots : our bey had evidently very little 
faith in any thing but his sword. At length we 
dozed as we sat. 

Before daylight the major got up and went 
out ; I followed him, accosting him in his native 
tongue. 

" How well you speak English, my good fel- 
low," he said. 

The frank and cordial manner of the major so 
impressed me with his honesty, that I hurriedly 
explained who I was, the critical state of things 
with us ; and my anxiety to extricate Odysseus 
from the peril that encompassed him. 

The major instantly and earnestly entered 
into my views, saying, " The vessel we came in 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AXD BYROX. 261 

will remain two or three days in the port ; it 
will take but a few hours to reach her. I will 
return and stop by her for Odysseus, detain her 
as long as I can, and go with him to the Ionian 
Islands." 

I told the chief our plan, he eagerly accepted 
the offer, — I pledging myself to keep possession 
of his mountain home, and to protect his family 
until altered circumstances permitted him to re- 
turn to Greece. Hastily making the needful 
arrangements, the good-hearted major departed 
on his mission. The chief having much to say 
to me, and thinking it probable I might be in 
danger on my return to the cave, convoyed me 
with his whole force. On our parting, he called 
some of his principal followers, and said, " I 
call you to witness, I give this Englishman the 
cavern and everything of mine in it." Then 
turning to me, he said, " Do what you think 
best without referring to me." As we sat on 
the turf by a broken fountain, he placed his 
rough hairy hand on my bosom, saying, " You 
have a strong heart in a strong body ; you find 
fault with me for distrusting my countrymen, — 
I never doubted you. I trusted you from the 
first day as I do now on the last we may ever 



262 KECOLLECTIOXS OF THE 

be together ; though I cannot understand why 
you give money and risk life, to serve those who 
would shoot you for money, as they will me if 
they can." 

Either from the vigilance of the Ottomans at 
Euboea, or of those with him, or from some 
other impediment, the chief did not reach the 
port he was to have embarked from until after 
the vessel had sailed with the major, although 
he had detained her as long as possible. I then 
expected the chief would make for the cave ; 
we kept a sharp look-out, and posted men at 
the several passes ; he wrote to me from time to 
time, but nothing definitively ; and we passed 
months in this state of suspense. Fenton came 
from the Morea. I was in the daily habit of 
sallying forth to gather news, though warned 
against it. Early in April, when I was some 
distance from my den, I was startled by a shot ; 
the red-capped Greeks were dogging me behind 
the rocks and pine-trees ; I hastened up the 
steep ascent, gained the lower ladder, mounted 
slowly until I recovered my wind, then faster, 
the musket-balls whistling by me right and left 
— above and below. I should have come down 
faster than I went up, but from the great ad- 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 263 

vantage my men above had, and the sharp 
cross-fire they kept up to cover my retreat. On 
my entering the trap-door my assailants re- 
treated across the mountain. 

Shortly after this occurrence, a large body of 
Greeks came to Velitza, a village at the foot of 
our mountain, a detachment ascended towards 
us ; on coming near, one of them advanced, 
holding a green bough as a flag of truce ; he 
said, Odysseus was with the troops below, and 
that he had brought a letter from him to me. 
It was to this effect, that he — Odysseus — was 
now with his friend Ghouras ; he intreated me 
to come to him to confer on matters of great 
importance ; saying that hostages would be 
given for my safe return, &c. 

I merely answered, " If what you say is true, 
why don't you come here ? you may bring 
Ghouras or half-a-dozen others with you." 

Several notes of this sort were exchanged. 
In the last, our chief urged me to capitulate as 
the only means of saving his life ; telling me 
that I might now do so on my own terms, for 
those with him were Romeliotes favourably dis- 
posed to him and to me ; and that, if I lost this 
opportunity, I should be blockaded by his ene- 



264 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

mies, the Moreotes, who would give us no 
quarter. Of course I declined, for I knew the 
chief was writing under compulsion ; the mes- 
senger tried what he could do by tampering 
with my men, individually proffering large 
bribes ; so I told one of the men to shoot him 
if he spoke another word. During this parley, 
the most nimble-footed of the enemy scaled the 
cliffs to see if it was possible to get at us by the 
aid of ropes from above, or by blasting the 
rocks, or with shot or shell. I sent several of 
my people to mingle with the foe, offering five 
thousand dollars to those who would aid the 
escape of Odysseus. On the fourth or fifth day 
they departed, — leaving spies to watch us, as I 
knew they would. I then sent all the men 1 
could trust to follow on the trail of our chief, 
and wrote to all his friends. That I might not 
be made a target of a second time, I did not 
venture forth alone. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRO>^. 265 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

" Spare me ! oh spare ! — I will confess, 

They 

Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I 
And my companion forthwith murdered him." 

Cenci. 

In the latter end of May, 1825, a young 
Englishman named Whitcombe came to me 
from Racora, in Boeotia, where he had been 
serving with the Greek troops. At all times glad 
to see my countrymen, I was particularly so at 
that time ; Fenton was especially pleased with 
him. They both dined and passed their even- 
ings with me, but slept below in Fenton's hut. 
On the fourth day, after our noonday meal, we 
sat smoking and drinking on the verandah of 
my house on the lower terrace longer than 
usual. 

It was intensely hot ; all my people had re- 
treated into one of the upper grottoes, where it 
was always cool, to enjoy their usual siesta. 
Fenton said, he tad made a • bet with Whit- 
combe about their shooting, and that I was to 



266 -RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

decide it. My Italian servant, Everett, then put 
up a board for a target at the extremity of the 
terrace. After they had fired several shots, at 
Fenton's suggestion I sent the Italian to his 
comrades above. Fenton then said to me, after 
some more shots had been fired wide of the 
mark, " You can beat him with your pistol, he 
has no chance with us veterans." 

I took a pistol from my belt and fired ; they 
were standing close together on a flat rock, two 
yards behind me ; the instant I had fired I 
heard another report, and felt that I was shot in 
the back. As one of their flint guns had just 
before hung fire, and I had seen Fenton doing 
something to the lock of his, I thought it was 
an accident. I said, " Fenton, this must have 
been accidental ! " He assured me it was so, 
and expressed the deepest sorrow. No thought 
of their treachery crossed my mind. Fenton 
said, " Shall I shoot Whitcombe ? " I an- 
swered, " No." I took my other pistol from my 
belt, when Fenton said, " I will call your ser- 
vant," and hastily left me, following Whitcombe 
to the entrance porch. The dog, growling 
fiercely, first stopped their flight ; he had the 
voice of a lion, and never gave a false alarm. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND EYRON. 267 

The Hungarianj always prompt, was quickly at 
his post on the upper terrace, and hearing I was 
shot, instantly killed Fenton. Whitcombe at- 
tempted to escape by the trap-door leading to 
the ladder ; the dog threw him on his back, and 
held him as if he had been a rat. Achmett, the 
Turk, seized him, bound his arms, dragged him 
to a crane used for hoisting things from below, 
put a slip-knot in the rope, and placed it round 
his ankles to hang him. His convulsive shrieks 
and the frantic struggles he made as his execu- 
tioners were hoisting him over the precipice, 
calling on God to witness that he was innocent, 
thrilled through my shattered nerves ; he be- 
seeched me to let him live till the morning, or 
for one hour, that he might write home, or even 
for five minutes until he had told me everything. 
I could not conceive it possible that an English 
gentleman, my guest, on the most cordial terms 
with me, should, after four days' acquaintance, 
conspire with Fenton to assassinate me — there 
had been no provocation, and I could see no 
motive for the act. Fenton had never seen 
Whitcombe before, nor had I. If 'there was 
foul play, Fenton must have been the traitor ; 
so thinking, I ordered the execution to be post- 



268 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

poned until the mystery was solved. I had 
very great difficulty in staying the execution, 
every one in the cave clamouring for vengeance. 
His life now hung on mine, and everybody 
thought that I was mortally wounded. They 
all swore if I died, they would roast him by a 
slow fire ; this was no idle threat, for it had 
been done on more than one occasion during 
the sanguinary war. When I was shot, I sat 
down on the rock I had been standing on, bend- 
ing down my head to let the blood flow from 
my mouth, a musket-ball and several broken 
teeth came with it — the socket of the teeth was 
broken, and my right arm paralyzed. I walked 
without assistance into the small grotto I had 
boarded up and floored and called my house ; it 
was divided into two small rooms, and there was 
a broad verandah in front. Squatting in a cor- 
ner, my servant cut open my dress behind, and 
told me I had been shot with two balls between 
my shoulders, near together, on the right side of 
my spine, and one of them close to it. One of 
the balls, as I have said, its force expended on 
my bones, dropped from my mouth without 
wounding my face ; the other broke my collar- 
bone, and remained in my breast — it is still 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 269 

there. No blood issued from the places they 
had entered at. We had * no surgeon or medi- 
cines in the cave ; the air was so dry and pure, 
our living so simple, that this was the first visit 
sickness or sorrow paid us. Nature makes no 
mistakes, doctors do ; probably I owe my life to 
a sound constitution, and having had no doctor. 

The morning after I had respited Whitcombe, 
my servant brought me the following letter from 
him, which he read to me, though he could not 
speak English : 

" For God's sake, sir, permit me to see you, if 
it is but for five minutes conversation ; it will 
save my life. In the fulness of contrition I 
yesterday told Favourite (Everett) my crime, 
and through misconstruction, or some other 
cause, he has interpreted it to Camerone, so as 
to cause my death. They all declare to me they 
will kill me and burn me. Camerone knocked 
me down and has thrown me in irons. For the 
mercy of Almighty God, let me see you ; instead 
of augmenting, my explanation will palliate my 
offence. I wish not that it should be alone. I 
wish also that Camerone and Everett should be 
by, to question me before you, and to endeavour 
to implicate me if they can. I wish only to tell 



270 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

you all the circumstances which I told Everett. 
Camerone declares that I have plotted all the 
evil for Ulysses (Odysseus). For God's sake 
let me explain myself immediately, and do not 
let me be murdered without a word of explana- 
tion. O God ! my misery is already too great ; 
they care not for what you tell them ; they want 
to tie me up by my irons to the beam of the 
room, and cut my head off." 

I refused to see him : he then wrote an in- 
coherent account of what took place between 
him and Fenton — the latter accusing me of 
having usurped his place, as Odysseus wished 
him to have the command during his absence ; 
saying that Odysseus had sent a messenger to 
him at Athens to that effect, and that on his 
return he should take possession of the cave ; 
that there were beautiful women in it, and stores 
of gold; he would man it with English, clothe 
his followers with rich dresses and jewels ; there 
would be a row first, a scene of blood, but that 
all he wanted was a friend to stand by him. 
By Whitcombe's account — too rambling and ab- 
surd to transcribe — his feeble brain was worked 
up to a state of homicidal insanity ; he used 
the gentle term of infatuation. He persisted in 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 271 

his asseveration that Fenton shot me, and his 
only crime was not warning me of my danger. 
The only thing his writing proved, was that he 
had a very feeble intellect, and that Fenton had 
taken advantage of his weakness. He was now 
mad with terror, he screamed and shrieked if 
any one came near him. he was in irons and 
chained to the wall, with no other food than 
bread and water. I resolved on the twentieth 
day of his imprisonment to set him free, which 
I did. When restored to life and liberty he- 
wrote me the following letter: — 

Much-injured Sir, 
I cannot express to you what I feel for your 
unmerited kindness to me for your releasing me 
from an untimely death ; other release it is not 
in the power of man to procure for me, my in- 
ternal misery and shame being complete. May 
you never feel the half that I do. May you 
never be like me, reduced by an acquaintance of 
four days with a villain from the smiling circles 
who loved me, and had pleasure in my society, 
to the solitary wretched outcast which I am now 
become. I have now no home, no family, no 
friends — and all I regret is that I have still the 



272 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

gnawings of a conscience which makes me pre- 
fer life a little longer, with all my former enjoy- 
ments cut off, to an ignominious and untimely 
end. I can say no more, perhaps now I have 
troubled you too much. 

That God may send you a speedy recovery, 
and turn every curse which falls upon my head 
into a blessing upon yours, is the prayer of the 

wretched 

W. G. Whitcombe. 

He subsequently addressed one of his friends 
as follows : 

Camp, August 11, 1825. 

My dear Sir, 
You will, perhaps, be astonished at my ad- 
dressing you, when from the unhappy circum- 
stances into which my fatality has immersed me, 
I ought only to calculate on your discarding all 
converse with a being whose sin has placed be- 
tween him and society a gulf fitter to be re- 
moved by any hands but his. But I cannot, 
cannot bear so sudden a transition into exquisite 
misery and shame without a line which may 
give palliatives to my offence. Scan it with a 
dispassionate eye ; my only motive for begging 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 273 

this last favour of you is, that you may rather 
hold me the weak unsuspecting tool, than the 
practised unprincipled villain. Others played 
that part ; others saw my easy nature, and 
thought me a fit instrument for the furthering of 
their grand speculations and enterprises. They 
discerned rightly — they have entailed the curse 
upon me ; they have made the villain of me 
that they wished; but yet shall that curse be 
retaliated upon them. One is dead : the other 
still lives, and has left behind him many little 
interesting traits of character which will tend 
well to the blazon ment of his fame, and con- 
science, if not warped by constant meannesses, 
shall by its sweet recollections requite him for 
the rest. 

Charmed by Mr. Humphreys's account of the 
excessive intrepidity, honour, romantic situation, 
&c., &c., of his friend Fenton, added to his good- 
nature and bonhomie^ I was induced by the re- 
peated, by the urgent entreaties of thgit Mr. 
Humphreys, added to a letter (expressing the 
most pressing invitation from Fenton, addressed 
to Humphreys, with many dark mystic expres- 
sions, known only, I presume, to himself) — I 
was induced, I say, to pay that visit to the 
18 



274 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

cave. On my arrival I was beset by Fenton's 
utmost talents of duplicity (in which never 
mortal man has excelled him). Touched by his 
mournful tales of wrongs, rejection, deprivation 
of right, viewing him only as the romantic, the 
injured, the generous hero he had been repre- 
sented by Humphreys, I swore to stand by him 
on his resolution to recover his rights or die. 
He worshipped me for it, and being too good a 
discerner of character to disclose further the 
nature of his designs, at the idea of which he 
knew I would revolt, he nailed me to the spot 
and moment of action, and by not giving a 
minute's time to recover from my infatuation, 
he precipitated me into that hell of guilt and 
shame which had long yawned for the wretched 
adventurer as his meed, but which, without 
arraigning Providence, might still, methinks, 
have been withheld from me. But where mis- 
fortune ever exists, there am I sure to get 
acquainted with it. And because such a villain 
survived in the same land, I without holding 
with him a shadow of previous connection, with- 
out one thought in the whole association of our 
ideas, which brought with it the slightest simili- 
tude, whereby to enable me to account by a 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 275 

harsh destiny, for my being coupled with the 
memory of such a villain's fate, am nevertheless 
doomed, solely because such an one exists, to 
connect myself, and all my happiness and honour, 
irretrievably with his fate. I am now a wander- 
ing outcast, a being whose very claim on society 
is departed, and would not now wish to renew 
those claims, from the recollections of depend- 
ence which would necessarily hang on that 
renewal. 

But it is not for myself that I am wretched. 
No — I can roam to far distant regions, and 
amidst other scenes and other inhabitants, com- 
mence a new career, unembittered by the past. It 
is for my family, a family who had boasted that, 
through all their branches and connections, it had 
never had a spot to sully it. That that family 
should, through my faults, be disgraced, is more 
than I can bear. My mother is a parent who 
loves me to distraction. I received a letter a 
few days ago from that quarter. She has been 
dangerously ill, and the only reflection that con- 
tributes to her recovery is that of seeing me 
return crowned with laurels. They will be 
laurels I 

Now view the reverse. It has been reported 



276 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

that I was dead. That report, with aggravated 
causes, will reach the ears of my family; my 
mother, I know will not survive it. And all this 
for me. 

I only regret that being too great a coward to 
put an end to my existence, I cannot cut off the 
miseries of anticipation. 

But I have troubled you too long with sub- 
jects about which you can feel but little interest. 
Only one word more. Should an opportunity 
present itself, for God's sake let not accounts 
reach England that I am killed. 

With hopes that you will excuse my long and 
selfish letter, and with many kindest remem- 
brances to Mrs. Alison and all your family, 

I remain. 
Your sincere though unfortunate friend, 
(Signed) W. G. Whitcombe. 

P. S. — I sincerely regret that, by the most un- 
toward circumstances, both the letters which you 
have been good enough at different times to 
send me, have been lost before they reached my 
hands ; the one by the lies of that rascal Char- 
lilopulo — the other by Dr. Tindal, amongst his 
other things. 



LAST DAYS OP SHELLEY AND BYRON. 277 



CHAPTER XXV. 

'Tisthus 
Men cast the blame of their unprosperous acts 
Upon the abettors of their own resolves, 
Or any thing but their weak, guilty selves. 

Shelley. 

Foul plots have been devised, and fit instru- 
ments found to execute them in less than four 
days. I was much more astonished and humili- 
ated at the retrospection of my idiotic infatu- 
ation when, by Fenton's papers and other evi- 
dence, I discovered that I had been his dupe 
from the first — a blind man led by a fiendish 
cur — no more. He was foisted on me at Misso- 
longhi, to act as a spy on Odysseus, and had 
done so for a whole year. 

My credulity was such that I not only told 
him all I knew, but employed him in many im- 
portant transactions. Not a shadow or doubt of 
his honesty ever crossed my mind from the first 
day of our meeting until his death. I was a 
fool, and deserved my fate. Fenton, a merce- 



278 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

nary bungling ruffian, in the hands of a professor 
of the black art. 

To cut short this disagreeable subject, I ex- 
tract from Gordon's always fearless and generally 
accurate History of the Greek Revolution, his 
brief notice of the affair : — 

" On taking the field, Odysseus deposited his 
family in his den on Mount Parnassus, which 
he confided to the guard of TrelaAvny, (who had 
lately married his youngest sister,) with a hand- 
ful of men, for that singular cavern is impreg- 
nable, and when the ladders that gave access to 
it were removed, neither armies nor artillery 
could make any impression. It is a perpendicu- 
lar height of one hundred and fifty feet from the 
bottom of a precipice, and sheltered above by a 
lofty arch. In front were natural and artificial 
bulwarks, concealing the interior and a portal 
cut in the rock, to which the flights of ladders 
gave access ; within were houses, magazines 
stored for the consumption of years, and a fine 
spring of water. 

" An attempt was made to murder Trelawny 
by two of his own countrymen, one of whom, 
Fenton, a determined villain, having accepted a 
bribe from the government, seduced the other, a 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 279 

crack-brained young man, into complicity by ex- 
travagant tales, and the perpetual excitement of 
potent liquors. Although pierced through the 
back with two carbine balls, fracturing his arm 
and his jaw, the wonderful vigour of his consti- 
tution enabled Trelawny to recover. In the 
midst of his agony, he had the magnanimity to 
dismiss, unhurt, the unhappy youth who fired at 
him ; as for Fenton, the prime assassin, he was 
instantly shot by a Hungarian soldier. 

" In the same month, on the 17th of June, the 
rising sun disclosed the lifeless body of Odysseus 
stretched at the foot of the tower that had been 
his prison ; it was said, that a rope by which he 
was lowering himself had broken, and that he 
was killed by the fall ; however, no one gave 
credit to this story ; it was supposed that he had 
been strangled, and then thrown from the top. 
Ghouras subsequently felt remorse for the death 
of his former patron ; heard with pain the men- 
tion of his name, and occasionally murmured, 
' In that business I was misled. ' There can be 
no doubt that Mavrocordato was at the bottom 
of these tragical events, instigated fully as much 
by private revenge as care of the public weal. 
Odysseus was undoubtedly a tyrant and a trai- 



280 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

tor; Trelawny in open rebellion, and suspected 
of tampering with the Turks, who were very 
anxious to get possession of the cave ; but all 
this might have been forgiven, had they not pre- 
viously been the personal foes of the Director- 
General of Western Greece." 

For the first twenty days after being wounded, 
I remained in the same place and posture, sitting 
and leaning against the rock, determined to 
leave everything to nature. I did not change or 
remove any portion of my dress, nor use any 
extra covering. I would not be bandaged, plas- 
tered, poulticed, or even washed ; nor would I 
move or allow any one to look at my wound. I 
was kept alive by yolks of eggs and water for 
twenty days. It was forty days before there was 
any sensible diminution of pain ; I then sub- 
mitted to have my body sponged with spirit and 
water, and my dress partly changed. I was re- 
duced in weight from thirteen stone to less than 
ten, and looked like a galvanized mummy. I 
was first tempted to try and eat by seeing my 
Italian eating raw ham of a wild hog which I 
had shot and cured ; by great effort I opened my 
mouth sufficiently to introduce a piece of the 
size of a shilling, notwithstanding the agony 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 281 

of moving my fractured jaw, and by degrees 
managed to devour it, and from that time gath- 
ered strength, I suppose from the affinity of our 
Saxon nature to hog ; excepting coffee, I refused 
all wishy-washy or spoon-food, and stuck to wild 
boar, which in turn stuck to me ; it spliced my 
bones and healed my flesh, excepting my right 
arm, which was shrivelled up and paralyzed. 

In three months after I had been wounded, 
my hurts were healing, and my health returning, 
but my right arm was painful, withered, and 
paralyzed, my only hope of regaining the use of 
it was to get the ball extracted ; and for that 
purpose a surgeon was indispensable. 

Ghouras had been nominated to the com- 
mand of Eastern Greece, as the stipulated pay- 
ment for his treachery to his former chief, but 
the Turks held all the plains. So we were envi- 
roned with foes and closely watched, but my 
trusty and zealous friends the Klephtes, were 
always on the alert ; nestling with the eagles, 
amongst the most inaccessible crags by day, and 
coming down with the wolves at night, they 
supplied us with fresh provisions and kept us 
informed of everything that took place around. 
They even brought me a Klephtes surgeon, stip- 



282 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

ulating to kill him if he did not cure me ; he 
made an incision with a razor under my breast- 
bone, and poked about with his finger to find the 
ball, but in vain ; the Klephtes then proposed to 
escort me to any place I chose to go to for a 
Frank doctor, or to .kidnap one at Athens, and 
bring him to me, and to leave their families as 
hostages. I had perfect faith in their probity, 
but lingered on hoping for a change. Soon 
after this, Zepare, one of their leaders, brought 
me news at night that his men were on the trail 
of a Frank, and they would bring him to me: 
he said a medico, for they believe all the Franks 
are more or less so, from their habit of carrying 
and giving medicines. The next morning a 
party of soldiers arrived escorting the Major 
who so astonished Odysseus and the Turkish 
Bey at Talanta, by his eccentricity. I was 
even more surprised now than then at meeting 
him. It appeared he had never lost sight of me. 
When he heard I was in peril, he made several 
unsuccessful attempts to come to me ; he then 
took a cruise in search of the Commodore on 
the station, Hamilton, and stated my case. 
Hamilton, always prompt in acts of humanity, 
insisted on the government's not only permitting 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 283 

the Major to have free access to me, but that I 
should have liberty to embark in one of his ships, 
if I chose to do so. After some days of delib- 
eration and consultation with Odysseus's widow, 
and the inmates of the cave, I reluctantly agreed 
to take advantage of this favourable occasion ; 
my trusty crew promised to remain at their 
posts until my return, or until the enemies of 
their former chief, then in power, were ousted, 
and then to be guided by circumstances. No 
sooner had I left than Ghouras closely invested 
the place. The eagerness of both the Greeks 
and Turks to possess the cave, arose from the 
stories current in that land of lies, of the fabu- 
lous treasures it contained. The cupidity of the 
Greeks was lashed up to frenzy ; every strata- 
gem their subtle wits, could devise was tried; 
crouching behind every rock and tree, they kept 
up a continual fusilade ; they might as well 
have fired at the man in the moon, as at the 
men in the mountain — if they came too near, 
the Hungarian stopped them with a shower of 
grape from the cannon. Some months after, 
when men and things were changed, the inmates 
of the cavern came to terms with some of the 
old friends of the late chief, who had always 



284 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

used their influence to protect the cave, as well 
they might, since much of the plunder they had 
accumulated during the war was deposited 
within it. If the Hungarian Camerone had 
served in any other country than Greece in a 
time of war he would have ranked high, for he 
was a well-trained warrior, skilful, resolute, and 
modest ; he had been nearly two years in Greece, 
when I fell in with him at Missolonghi, serving 
without pay or promotion : noted he certainly 
was, for his valour had been conspicuous in 
many battles. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 285 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

Victory! Victory. Austria, Russia, England, 
And that tame serpent, tliat poor shadow, France, 
Cry peace, and that means death, wlien monarchs speak. 

Shklley. 

When the Muses deserted Parnassus, the 
Klephtes, i. e. outlaws, took possession of their 
haunts, and kept alive the love of freedom and 
the use of arms. They were the only Greeks 
I found with any serjse of honour ; they kept 
their words and fulfilled their engagements ; I 
protected and fed their families, and they es- 
corted me in all my expeditions ; I was con- 
tinually in their power, yet they never attempted 
to betray me. The Klephtes were the only 
efficient soldiers at the commencement of the 
insurrection; and their leaders maintained the 
war for three years so successfully that the Greek 
government were enabled to borrow money. 
The government then resolved to divide the 
forces of the Klephtes, to appoint their own 
partisans as leaders, and to conduct the war 



286 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

themselves; they raised forces and imprisoned 
the former military leaders, wasted time in dis- 
puting about their plans of campaigns, and the 
nomination of the commissioners to see that 
they were carried out. In two scientific cam- 
paigns carried on by civilians, the Greeks lost 
all the territory the former arbitrary chiefs had 
won ; and of the foreign loan, 2,800,000/., there 
remained only five shillings in bad money at 
the close of those campaigns. If there had 
been any place of refuge, the insurrection would 
have ended by the flight of the leaders and sub- 
mission of the people. The members of the 
government sent away the money they had em- 
bezzled, and the primates and other rich rascals 
attempted to escape with their families, but 
they were stopped by the populace. 

Greece was reconquered; the vanquished 
Christians sat in sullen groups round the walls 
of their only remaining fortress in the Morea; 
death, or to resume the Moslem's chains, their 
only alternative. At this critical period a mes- 
senger arrived from Navarino, proclaiming, in 
the words of our great poet, 
" News, friends ; our wars are done, the Turks are drowned." 

The people now sprang up frantic with joy. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 287 

For six years all the Christian states had 
been standing looking on at the bloodiest in- 
surrection on record, sympathizing with the 
unbelieving Ottomans. At the twelfth hour, 
the three great maritime Leviathans turned 
round, and, falling unexpectedly upon their 
ancient allies, annihilated them. 

The policy of the crafty Muscovite is intel- 
ligible. He wanted to possess Greece and 
cripple his natural enemy, the Turk. He did 
both at little cost; the Ottoman fleet was de- 
stroyed, and Greece converted from a Turkish 
into a Russian Hospodariat. The policy of 
France and England is inexplicable ; it is one 
of those inscrutable diplomatic mysteries de- 
vised by heaven-born ministers, which men of 
women born cannot comprehend. 

From the beginning to the end of the insur- 
rection in Greece, Commodore Rowan Hamilton 
and Colonel C. J. Napier were the only English 
officers in command who acted justly and gen- 
erously to the Greeks. Sir Thomas Maitland, 
and his successor. Sir Frederick Adams, High 
Commissioners of the Ionian Islands, from their 
natural sympathy with tyranny, favoured the 
Turks on all occasions. Napier was high- 



288 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

minded and independent in his opinions, which 
is always a disqualification in the eyes of offi- 
cials. His general popularity and superior in- 
fluence with the lonians mortified Sir Frederick 
Adams excessively ; he did all he could in his 
official capacity to thwart Napier; he gave vent 
to his rancour in the most trivial matters ; he 
even sent an official letter to Napier on the 
impropriety of his wearing moustachios. The 
Colonel was very much amused at this de- 
spatch; he instantly obeyed the mandate by 
cutting them off, and inclosing them in his 
reply to the Lord High Commissioner, who, no 
doubt, forwarded this important correspondence, 
with the inclosure, to the Commander-in-Chief. 
If these emblems of war are preserved amongst 
the trophies at the Horse Guards, the hair may 
be used as the lion's beard is by the Indians — 
they burn it, and swallow the ashes, believing 
it wiU give them the strength and com'age of 
the lion. 

It was particularly revolting to the mind as 
well as feelings of Napier to witness the war as 
waged in Greece, — without a plan, combination, 
system, or leader; every man frantic with ex- 
citement to kill and plunder on his own account. 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 289 

Napier, as I have before said, would have un- 
dertaken the war when he was solicited by the 
Greeks to do so, if they had complied with the 
terms he considered indispensable to their suc- 
cess, which were that he should have uncon- 
trolled power over the army. Whilst the Greek 
government were treating with Napier, a dis- 
tinguished French officer, Colonel Fabvier, vol- 
unteered his services without any stipulations, 
and was accepted. Napier having no other 
object than the success of a just cause, pointed 
out to me on the map the strategy and tactics 
he should have used at that juncture, had he 
commanded the Greek forces in the Morea. I 
asked him to write his plan, as the art of war 
is so little studied by our military men. I tran- 
scribe a campaign on scientific principles, as 
improvised on the exigency of the moment, by 
the great master of the art; the general prin- 
ciples laid down by so skilful a commander are 
applicable to any other locality in all times, 
especially in defensive warfare, and it requires 
no prophet to foretell there will be many such 
wars ere the lamb lies down with the lion. 

Napier's letters not only exemplify the skill 
of the soldier, but show the frank, generous, 
19 



290 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

manly character of the man. Byron, in a letter 
to the Greek committee from Cephalonia, in 
1823, speaking of Colonel Napier, says : " Of his 
military character, it is superfluous to speak, of 
his personal, I can say, from my own knowledge 
as well as from all rumour of private report, that 
it is as excellent as his military ; in short, a 
better or a braver man, is not easily to be found ; 
he is our man, to lead a regular force, or to 
organize a national one for the Greeks, — ask the 
army — ask any one." 

The following letters are addressed to me by 
this great General : — 

26(h May, 1826^. 

Circumstances must decide in war, speaking 
generally, but frequently they may be com- 
manded by able arrangements ; instead of wait- 
ing to see what an enemy will do, he may be 
often forced to do that which we want him to 
do. I think this may be now accomplished by 
the Greek troops, should Ibrahim Pacha besiege 
Napoli di Romania. In this event, I conclude 
he will have about 15,000 men, and that he will 
draw his supplies from Navarin or Modon, a 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 291 

distance of about eighty miles ; and have an in- 
termediate depot at Tripolitza, which is about 
twenty-five from Napoli. These roads pass 
through the mountains, and great difficulties 
will arise in marching his convoys, both from 
the nature of the country itself, and the exposure 
to constant attacks. 

I also conclude that the Greek forces will 
amount to about 6,000 regulars and 10,000 ir- 
regulars, exclusive of the garrison of Napoli, in 
which I would leave only irregulars, the best to 
be had ; taking the worst, with the whole regu- 
lar force, to Monemvasia, into which place I 
would throw in as much provision as possible ; 
and leaving this fortress with the smallest pos- 
sible garrison picked from the irregulars, but (as 
well as Napoli di Romania) with the most reso- 
lute governor and engineers^ I would issue forth 
and throw the whole regular and remaining ir- 
regular force on the communications of the be- 
sieging army. 

The point at which I would cut them must 
be determined by local circumstances, viz : the 
force of the enemy; the distribution of that 
force ; the nature of the country ; and the exact 
knowledge of distances, or rather times of march. 



292 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

By this, the Greek army would oblige the 
Egyptian army to raise the siege, or to send a 
force able to clear the road of the Greek army, 
or he must go without provisions ; if he raises 
the siege, such a failure, besides its actual cost, 
would have an immense moral effect to his pre- 
judice, and enable the Greeks to take more bold 
measures ; in short, it would be, what they have 
yet not seen, a victory produced by sound prin- 
ciples of war. 

If he prefers the second way, viz : to send a 
force which he thinks capable of clearing the 
road, and reopening his communications, what 
is the consequence ? His army must be so 
weakened that the siege cannot be continued 
with vigour ; and the detached force will either 
be fought and defeated by the Greeks, or they 
would retire before this force into Maina, and 
even to Monemvasia. The moment this was 
done, this detached force would again march to 
join Ibrahim before Napoli ; and would be fol- 
lowed up by the Greek army, which would again 
occupy its old position on the communication. 
This might be repeated twice or three times; 
but it is impossible that Ibrahim could continue 
this game long, and the moment he ceased to 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 293 

play it, he would be obliged to raise the siege. 
It seems difficult to say how this plan could fail, 
unless the Greek commander allowed the force 
detached against him to cut him off from Mo- 
nemvasia, or from wherever he drew his sub- 
sistence. 

As to the third choice, it is evident that he 
could not adopt it, as, although his Egyptians 
may live upon little, yet that little they must 
have ; he would therefore try to receive his sup- 
plies from Patras ; and although there would, 
perhaps, be more difficulty still, the Greek gen- 
eral might play the same game on that line of 
operation, as he would on the line with Navarin. 
He might occupy the last with his regulars, and 
detach his irregulars on the first. A Turkish 
force could hardly venture against the Greek 
irregulars, having their left flank exposed to the 
regular army of Greeks. I do not know whether 
I have clearly explained my meaning ; but I am 
sure that if the Greek government will do what 
they ought, viz : give Colonel Fabvier the full 
and uncontrolled direction of the war, or do this 
with Colonel Gordon, both those gentlemen will 
see what I mean, and that this plan is formed 
on sound strategetical principles. 



294 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

It is impossible to believe that any force 
which Ibrahim could detach would be able to 
force six thousand regular Greek soldiers through 
the passes of the Mainiote country back upon 
Monemvasia. I have only supposed the worst 
in supposing that they would do this, but in 
point of fact I imagine the Greek regular force 
could occupy some strong position in which it 
would force the troops detached against it to 
give battle under every disadvantage ; and 
should the Greeks be defeated, that they might 
rally at and defend a multitude of defiles in the 
strong country between Tripolitza and Monem- 
vasia — all these things are details of the execu- 
tion, which depend on the talents of the com- 
manders. If this commander is Colonel Fabvier, 
with Colonel Gordon supporting him, there is 
no doubt in my mind of its success ; if the 
Greek force, on the contrary, is commanded by 
the Greek General-in-Chief, Colocotroni, it must 
inevitably fail, as he is incapable of even com- 
prehending, much less of executing such a 
campaign. 

In regard to the number of forces that I have 
supposed on aach side, it is not very material 
that I should be exact, because the principle will 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 295 

hold good as long as the disproportion between 
the opposed armies is not so great as to put an 
end to all opposition, and this is a disproportion 
so vast that in such a country as Greece I can 
hardly conceive possible. Supposing that the 
Turkish forces receive their provision by sea, 
then they would not perhaps detach a force 
against the Greek army coming from Monem- 
vasia, which might attack Tripolitza at its 
leisure: this, I suspect, would quickly produce 
the desired results I And last, though not least 
important, one has everything to expect from 
Lord Cochrane, who will not allow this provi- 
sion to arrive by sea so easily. Are we to sup- 
pose that one of the greatest men of the age, 
for such he decidedly is, will be unable to effect 
any thing against the enemy ? Lord Cochrane's 
whole life has been a series of proofs, that he 
possesses all the qualities of a great commander. 

Dear Trelawny, 
When I returned from my ride, I wrote down 
what I said ; — if you think it would be of any 
use, send it to Gordon. Not but that both he 
and Fabvier could form this plan as well or 
better than I, but my own opinion may have 



296 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

some weight with the Greeks, in support of 
those held by these two officers. For my own 
part, I would try this plan had I but one 
thousand men and one cannon ! so convinced 
am I that it is a sound one ; and that, if exe- 
cuted with skill, activity, and courage, it would 
make Ibrahim lose his game. 

Yours, 

C. Napier. 

I dare say this is full of errors, for I wrote as 
fast as I could scribble ; keep it, for I have no 
copy. I wish you to give me one. 

Cephalonia, 20tk June, 1826. 

Dear Trelawny, 
Many thanks for your note dated 12th, which 
I have only this morning received. I hear 
Hastings has reached Napoli, which I hope will 
help Gordon to make arrangements. I hear that 
Ibrahim Pacha has taken and fortified Sparta. — 
If he can occupy Leondari and Sparta with 
strong detachments, he may render the execu- 
tion of my plan difficult ; but if he divides his 
forces with such numerous garrisons, the ques- 
tion arises, whether or not he can keep the field? 



LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 297 

However, he would greatly embarrass all opera- 
tions by fortifying Leondari and Mistra (Sparta). 
These posts are, at this moment, the real points 
of " strategy " for the defence of Napoli ; and 
his seizure of them denotes a good military 
head. Were I in Gordon's place, supposing 
him master of his movements, I would make 
them keep their vigils in Sparta. That garrison 
should have no sinecure ; but my fear is, that at 
Napoli they are all in such a state of confusion 
and ignorance, that he will not be able to make 
any movements at all. However, all I can say 
is, that the loss of any strong post demands that 
the Greeks should act upon the same principle 
against those posts, that would have been acted 
upon against the original positions of the Turks. 
The general principle remains the same, but is 
applied to a different locality. For example 
(take your map). — When Mistra is held by the 
Turks, the Greeks can no longer throw them- 
selves on the line of communication between 
Tripolitza and Navarin. They must then 
change their object^ and throw themselves on 
the line between Mistra ; and from wherever 
the garrison draws its provisions, Mistra be- 
comes the object instead of Tripolitza. How 



298 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 

this is to be accomplished, God knows. Th 
war is in this instance, on too small a scale to 
judge by a map, as I could in a large movement 
acting against Tripolitza ; but military talent, 
in a country like the Morea, finds ways to do 
what it wants. The grand secret in mountain 
countries is to isolate the enemy, which obliges 
him to abandon his strong position, and attack 
you in yours. It is not to one so well ac- 
quainted with the country as you are, that I 
need say what it would be to attack a good po- 
sition in Greece, even without fortifications, 
much more with them. 

It is in the art of forcing an enemy to fight 
you on your own chosen ground, that military 
genius consists, and few things are more diffi- 
cult in practice. It unites so much theory and 
so much practice with great fearlessness of char- 
acter, no timid man will throw himself into those 
decisive positions which produce great results. 

Yours truly, 

C. Napier. 






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